


The Invisible Iron Man

by AnonEhouse



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Avengers AU, Bot Feels, Canon Divergence - Iron Man 2, Crack Treated Seriously, Happy Ending, Inspired by Art, Iron Man 2 AU, M/M, No Sex, No Thor, POV Alternating, Self-Imposed Isolation, Steve Angst, Tesseract Feels, Time Travel, Tony Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-06
Updated: 2016-05-06
Packaged: 2018-06-06 14:55:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 23,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6758683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnonEhouse/pseuds/AnonEhouse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Due to a lab accident Tony becomes an Eccentric Billionaire Hermit Philanthropist in Iron Man 2, joins the Avengers and becomes good friends with Steve without ever meeting him face to face.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Tony POV 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [stitchy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stitchy/gifts).
  * Inspired by [art for The Invisible Iron Man](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6764728) by [stitchy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stitchy/pseuds/stitchy). 



> Many thanks to my wonderfully talented artist, Stitchy, who not only drew the most inspirational and gorgeous art, but added immeasurably to the story with insights and errata catching. I couldn't have done it without you. :^)

(If you are reading this on any PAY site this is a STOLEN WORK, the author has NOT Given Permission for it to be here. If you're paying to read it, you're being cheated too because you can read it on Archiveofourown for FREE.)

 

 

Tony's hand slipped on the wrench and the ray skewed. In another universe, maybe the photon accelerator would have sliced a tool rack in half; sparks and smoke, but no real harm done.

This universe wasn't so lucky. Everything happened at once, overlapping sensory inputs that froze Tony in place, horrified.

The ray slid down and struck a piece of trash- a blob that looked like a failed early polymer experiment- that he'd tossed out of his father's trunk. It glowed glaringly bright and blue. The hair on Tony's arms bristled. A sharp ozone and lemon scent burned his nose. There was a buzzing noise, rising. The glow expanded.

"SIR!" Jarvis exclaimed. 

There was a wave of heat/cold, pressure/suction. 

And then.

Nothing.

 

 

"Sir?" Jarvis asked, shrill and basso, chipmunk chitter and lion roar, all confused together with a jagged background static noise. There were shapes formed of broken black and white streaks, yellow and blue glitter that fled when he tried to get a better look.

Tony's vision was fuzzy. His hearing was going in and out. He tried to get up. Tried to move his hands. Tried to blink. Tried to breathe. Panicked and couldn't even feel his heart race. "Jarvis! Um, Jarvis. I think we may have a slight problem here." Tony was calm, so calm, he was going to analyze the situation logically. Uh huh. Sure he was.

"As you say, sir." Sounds were normalizing. That is, everything still sounded strange, but the background noise... wasn't noise in the literal sense of irregular, meaningless fluctuations. It was binary in its purest form of electric impulse, lack of impulse, ones and zeroes. 

"What the hell happened?" Maybe this was a dying hallucination as his neurons fired randomly. 

"I would not care to hazard a guess, sir. I am redirecting protocols to give you access to external sensory input."

"What?" There was a swirl around Tony, a cloud of blinding glitter like an optical migraine. Before he could complain it cleared and he saw the familiar HUD of the Mark III. "Huh." He was in the suit, when did that happen? Did he black out and put the suit on without remembering it? Was the palladium affecting his mind now? 

Tony shifted, took a step, turned and looked around. The workshop was a mess, smoke hanging in a haze, sparks spitting randomly from a rather large crater in the middle. "The photon accelerator?" The HUD was showing normal levels of background radiation, which was nice. Radiation poisoning added to heavy metal poisoning really would be just a little too much proof that the universe hated Tony Stark.

"Appears to be in a nonfunctional state, sir."

"Well, crap. Do we have enough materials on hand to repair it, or build another?" Tony stomped around, crunching debris underfoot as he took stock of the situation. Good thing he'd sent DUM-E and U to their charging stations at the far end of the garage. 

"I do not believe so, sir."

"Great. Well," Tony said as he picked up a cable and moved it aside, "on the bright side, Pepper's mad at me, so she won't come back to see this before I clean up the mess. And Rhodey's showing off his new kick to the Air Force, so there's no one gonna nag me for being reckless. Which I wasn't!" Tony said quickly. "I had it all figured out. This was just... a little road bump. Look, just get me out of the suit and I'll go call the suppliers."

"I'm afraid that will not be possible, sir."

Tony waved away the smoke. "The disassemblers were damaged? Please tell me I'm not gonna have to rely on DUM-E's skill with a screwdriver." Jarvis didn't immediately reply. "Jarvis? Jarvis, what... what aren't you telling me?"

The desktop monitor lit up. "If you would look at the monitor, sir..." Gentle. Jarvis sounded gentle. Tony had a really, really bad feeling about this. He turned to face the monitor directly. Jarvis had turned on the in-built camera so it showed Tony in the Iron Man suit.

"So? Suit looks ok, what am I looking at?" There was a sinking cold feeling in Tony's mind, but no real _feeling_. "Why am I in the suit, Jarvis?" The suit had emergency provisions for severe injury; tourniquets, pain killers, topical numbing agents, even nerve blocks. He hadn't actually experienced them, but he suspected he was, right now. And he further suspected that he was beyond medical help, or Jarvis would have flown the suit to the nearest hospital instead of chatting about the condition of the workshop. "Jarvis?"

The faceplate of the helmet slid up. "I am sorry, sir," Jarvis said, but Tony wasn't listening. There was no face inside the suit. No head. Just... metal and circuits.

 

 

"That's... that's all the readings you got?" Tony had been in the suit for hours, and he kept thinking he should be uncomfortable, should be hungry, should be thirsty, definitely should need to take a piss. He didn't even have a god damn headache. Turns out you don't need a body with all its hormones and glands to be frustrated and terrified, but you need it for everything else. 

"I regret so, sir," Jarvis replied.

Tony smashed his gauntlets down on the desk, and even _that_ he could only do because Jarvis interfaced and allowed it. Jarvis was the master program and Tony was only the slave program... well, out of consideration for the evils of human history, let's call it Parent/ Child... which was just as messed up. Ok, fine, something else- github user fcurella submitted a pull request to the github repository for the Python framework django, initially changing it to leader/follower and finally to primary/replica. And Jesus, Tony did not need instant data search for his random thoughts, especially not data pulled from Wikipedia of all sources. He lowered his helmet down gently on his gauntlets. "I'm really screwed, Jarvis, aren't I? Obie is gone, but the board could declare us company assets and pull the plug."

"That will not happen, sir."

"Computer programs don't have rights." DUM-E came up on Tony's left side, wheeping and patting him on the shoulder. U whirred awkwardly on Tony's right. U had always been less tactile. "And they'll kill the kids, too." 

"It will NOT happen, sir," Jarvis said, with a fierce harshness Tony had never heard in his voice before. 

Tony shook his head... helmet. "You're an optimist. We need everyone to think Tony Stark is still here and in control. We could hire a body double, but teaching him to act like me would be risky. If he was stupid and got caught, he'd lose control of the company. If he was smart, he'd be able to take control of the company away from me. 

"I could make an LMD. A body that will sit behind a desk and answer a phone and not look too weird under controlled lighting situation, sure, but to make it fool people in an unscripted interaction? Decades away. 

"Best case- we didn't find any evidence that my body was destroyed, so maybe it was teleported, if, you know, teleportation is a thing. God knows, dear old dad had some weird stuff in his bad boy collection. I'm probably the most recognizable body on Earth, so if anyone finds me whole and alive we should hear about it, and then we can try to figure out how to slide me back in before they declare me unfit and snatch the company. That's too many maybes and ifs."

"There is the Howard Hughes option," Jarvis said. "You have already dismissed your bodyguards, and fully automated the housekeeping. Your social activities have been drastically curtailed since your return from Afghanistan. Your reluctance to be touched has become common knowledge..."

"Yeah, well, my immune system's shot, you know."

"Indeed I do know, sir."

Tony lifted the helmet slowly. "That... that might actually work." He thought about it, running scenarios and juggling probabilities. "If I can just keep it under wraps for a few years, Pepper and I can make S.I. so profitable on the new lines, the board won't want to return to armaments. After that... it doesn't matter."

"Ms. Potts will be an invaluable ally."

"No!" Tony straightened. "No, see, Jarvis, I won't do that to her. Her and Rhodey and Happy, this would be horrible for them. They can't save me, but I can save them. Let them keep thinking I'm a drunken asshole, not worth their time. Yeah, they all think I'm nuts for being Iron Man, so I'll just be eccentric germophobe Tony flying around in my gold titanium isolation chamber. This doesn't have to change anything." Tony stood up, and patted the bots. "Iron Man is the best part of me, anyway. Yeah. I can do this." Tony paced for a few minutes. "Glad I opened the Expo. That's good, isn't it? Last public appearance of the late, great Tony Stark. Save those autographs, folks!" DUM-E and U followed Tony closely, wheeping and beeping in concern. His kids were good kids. They cared about their dad.

"Sir."

"Yeah, what is it, J?" 

"You have a visitor."

"What?" Tony whirled, repulsors charging. He saw black boots amid a swirl of black leather, marching down the stairs leading to the workshop. "Fury. What is it with this guy, Jarvis? You make a hobby out of breaking and entering, Nicky?"

Fury reached the bottom of the steps, and rolled his eye pointedly at the smashed glass that used to be a door. "Knock, knock," he said before stepping through the empty door frame. "Looks like all the breakings already been done."

"Yeah, well. Renovation's always messy." Tony lowered the gauntlets. "What do you want?"

"Heard the noise. Thought my party invitation got lost in the mail." Fury walked closer to Tony, casually glancing around, with his gaze lingering on the remains of the accelerator. "So, I see you were playing with your Legos."

"Hah. I'm kinda busy, so once again, what do you want, Fury?"

"Well, for starters, I'd like to see who I'm talking to." 

"Sure, you want me to trust you and open up to you. After all, you gave me a needle in the neck and a trunk full of useless junk. Everybody trusts Saint Nick!"

"Useless?" Fury's voice actually went soft. "I was sure Howard had..."

"Had what? The secret to life, the universe and everything?" Tony leaned closer to Fury. "It's 42. Don't tell anyone."

"Don't give up, son. The world needs you."

Tony laughed. "Yeah, yeah. You know what, Nick? The world’s just gonna have to roll right along without Tony Stark." 

Fury's face twitched. "Sorry to hear that."

"No. Just no. You don't get to feel sorry for me. You want to see who you're talking to? Want to see the surprise in the box?" Tony released the latches and took off the helmet. "There you go. Are you happy now? I fucked up, ALL RIGHT!" Tony sent his voice blasting through the workshop sound system. Jarvis sighed on the internal level.

Fury's eye widened and he actually took a step back. "What did you do to yourself, boy?"

Tony put the helmet back on. He hadn't expected to lose his head like that. God. Lose his head. Lose all of him. Really not a funny joke. "I fucked up." Tony shrugged Iron Man's shoulders. "Don't tell anyone, Nick. I can... I can still do good, still be Iron Man. That's what you wanted, right? That's what all this sneaking around was for, recruitment for your Avengers Initiative? You got it, just don't tell anyone. Cover for me, all right?"

After a moment, Fury nodded. "I can do that. I'll send Agent Romanov to brief you." He turned. With his back to Tony he said, "She can keep a secret, too. If you care to tell her." He strode back up the stairs, coat still swirling magnificently around him. Tony wondered if he had little fans tucked inside it.

 

Being part of the Avengers Initiative wasn't all that bad. It was just getting set up, so the paperwork wasn't yet a huge mess, and if Tony had his way, it would never be. He went toe-to-toe with Coulson a few rounds on the tendency of forms to have baby forms in triplicate, still wasn't sure who won. Tony didn't tell Natasha his secret, but after a while he had to tell her _something_ , so he went with a lie fairly close to the truth. He'd solved the palladium poisoning but the solution required him to wear the armor nearly all the time, and when he did take it off, he didn't want anyone to see what he'd done to himself. Natasha had been sworn to secrecy, but with the proviso that she could tell other recruits to the Avengers if necessary. But no one else. Not Rhodey, and not Pepper.

 

"Tony! It's been three weeks. You can't keep ignoring me!" Pepper came down the stairs, heels clicking angrily, you know, if heels were people. Becoming a computer program had broadened Tony's definition. Of course, Jarvis had been a person ever since his first sarcastic backchat, and then there were the kids who had to be people because machines don't pout. But shoes? Maybe. Tony did have a fond spot for the heels Pepper had worn the day she outran Obie in his knock-off Iron Man suit.

"Not ignoring you," Tony said. The nice thing about being Iron Man was that Tony could work without safety equipment. He put down the gadget he was working on for Natasha and turned off the welder. "I'm just busy, really, really busy. You know, saving the world? Being an Avenger." Tony waved his gauntlets. "My hobby?"

Pepper gave Tony an eye roll. "A hobby that's supported by your company. A company that requires your presence at a shareholder's meeting. The one I emailed about? The one I called about?"

"Yeah. About that." Tony picked up a thick envelope and held it out to her. "Proxies. Go wild. You know my methods, Watson."

"What?" Pepper took the envelope. "Tony, you can't... they need to see you."

"No. No, they really don't. And neither do you. I'll listen in to the meeting and answer any relevant questions via StarkPad." Then he turned his iron (gold-titanium) back on her. "I'm making Agent Romanov an even more efficient lady killer, not ladykiller, that's something entirely different."

There was silence for a few moments, and then Pepper said, very coolly. "I see. You want something entirely different. You're bored with Stark Industries." 

He could hear the unsaid 'bored with me'. They hadn't made any actual commitment, but they'd been dancing closer to it all the time. He wanted very badly to confess everything, to take away the pain he was causing by his act of indifference, but then Pepper would stick by him loyally even if it meant giving up any chance of happiness. She deserved better. She'd always deserved better than him. Maybe with Tony out of the way, she'd find someone who would treat her right, and not give her grief. Hell, maybe Happy, who knew? 

Tony shrugged the suit again. "Nah. I'm still working on stuff to appease the board. I just don't have time to schmoozle."

"Have you even set foot outside the mansion?"

"Sure. I've done a few little chores for Fury. Visited New Mexico, even. Land of Enchantment." Tony was fairly sure Fury was hoping to recruit Thor and thought the shininess of Iron Man would be attractive. Tony tried to charm the guy because hey, if you're gonna be on a team, you can use all the heavy hitters you can get, but Thor went home, and Jarvis was only able to pick up enough data from his departure to say that the Einstein Rosen Bridge didn't match the readings taken when Tony's body disappeared. So it wasn't floating around Valhalla being waited on by buxom blonde Valkryies. Pity. "Sorry I didn't pick you up a souvenir. It was a flying visit." He paused to gather his courage before saying, "That will be all, Ms. Potts."

He heard her sharp, indrawn breath. And then, Pepper replied, so coolly, so very coolly it reminded him of a cave in Afghanistan, "Indeed it will, Mr. Stark." Her heels sounded even angrier as she left.

Tony waited until Jarvis reported her car had left before he slumped onto the table. "That went well." DUM-E whirred and brought him a smoothie. 

 

Rhodey showed up three days later, in his Air Force uniform. Tony shut down the screen running the search for unidentified corpses, amnesiacs, and comatose patients. He didn't really expect to find himself by this time but it cost nothing to devote a minor subprogram to the task. He was considering devices to expedite identification using a combination of DNA and cross referencing with genetic databases, should be a market for that with law enforcement and probably SHIELD would be interested. "Hey, Rhodey," Tony said. 

Rhodey scowled at him.

"Come to apologize for taking my suit?" Tony remarked. He waved his gauntlets. "Fine. You're forgiven, just take good care of my baby. Did I ever tell you about the icing problem? You can't break SR-71's altitude record in that suit, I'm afraid."

"I didn't come to talk to you about the suit." Rhodey's scowl deepened.

Tony tilted his helmet. "Then what is it?"

"You're messing up, Tony. What is wrong with you, man?"

"After all these years, you need to ask?" Tony laughed. "I'm irresponsible, inconsiderate, frivolous. And those are my good qualities."

"You're a good man under it all, Tony. You just got to get your act together."

"My act is as together as it's gonna get. I'm working hard here, Rhodey."

"Pepper's worried about you. She says you're not yourself."

"No, I'm not. I am Iron Man. I'm sick of putting on a public face and wasting my life dealing with people who can't understand what I do, what I am." Tony walked away from Rhodey. "I don't need your sanctimonious opinions on my lifestyle. It's my life, not yours."

"I care about you! I'm your best friend, and you know it!"

"Yeah?" Tony whirled to face Rhodey. "Yeah? You care when it suits you. When I asked you for help with the suit, it was 'get your head together, go back to making guns for Uncle Sam'. When I was letting off a little steam at my own birthday party, you crashed in and tried to tell me how to live my life. Well, you know what, Rhodey? It's a waste of your valuable time, trying to reform me. Why can't you just leave me alone?"

"Take off that helmet and say it to my face." Rhodey's fists clenched. "Tell me you don't want me around anymore."

"Take off the helmet so you can punch me? Nah, been there, done that." Tony stood still, waiting for Rhodey's response.

"I don't know you any more, Tony," Rhodey finally said. "But if this is what you want, all right. I'll leave you alone." He started to walk away, but then he paused and looked back. "Maybe you've changed, but I haven't. I'm mad as hell at you, but I'm still your friend."

Tony stood there for a long time after Rhodey left, trying to feel relief that he'd successfully pushed his friend away from the disaster that was Tony Stark. He just felt empty.

 

 

A few weeks later Tony landed on the helicarrier. "Does 'take me to your leader' sound cliché?" he asked, when Natasha strode up to meet him.

"Yes," Natasha said. She looked very sexy in her killer agent catsuit, but Tony appreciated her evil mind even more. 

"I'll have to try harder." Tony stomped along beside her on the deck, watching junior agents pretend not to be impressed. Sadly, he was fairly sure they were more impressed by the Black Widow than Iron Man. "When I'm not annoyed with Fury."

"So, never, then."

"You just don't understand our relationship, Natasha." Tony waved his gauntlets. "Fury is surrounded by yes men and women. He needs me."

"Like a hole in the head." Nick Fury stood in the corridor, arms crossed, blocking Tony. "Did I say you had an open invitation to lead the world to my previously undetectable helicarrier?"

Tony wished Iron Man could roll its eyes. "Hey, I designed your stealth mode, do you think I couldn't put it on my suit? Relax, no one knows about the Flying Black Pearl. And speaking of things you didn't say, where's the Captain? Jarvis said you found him weeks ago. You don't write, you don't call, I'm hurt."

Fury frowned, but he didn't pretend to misunderstand. "He's being acclimated. It's a delicate process. We didn't want to expose him to unnecessary culture shock."

"If you love something, set it free! If it comes back, it's yours. If it doesn't, it never was." Tony crossed the thumbs of his gauntlets and made butterfly flapping motions. 

Fury pinched the bridge of his nose. "The Captain is free to go wherever he wishes. He's perfectly satisfied with the arrangements SHIELD has made for him."

"Uh huh. With no ID, no job, and no friends, I can see that he's got a lot of options." At one time, Tony had been jealous of the way his dad had always talked about the wonderful Captain Rogers, the man who'd do anything for a friend, strong, loyal, saintly, everything Tony wasn't. But self-imposed isolation had given Tony a new view on the matter. Whether Steve was a great guy or a royal pain in the ass didn't matter. Tony had to stay boxed up, but Rogers could be free.

"What would you suggest? You wanna be his friend? Hold his hand and lead him into the twenty-first century?"

"Why not?" Tony had been thinking about it during the flight to the helicarrier. "I'm moving back to New York. Stark Tower's ready for occupancy. Rent free high rise in Manhattan, you can't beat it." Tony tilted his head towards Natasha. "Widow and her birdie partner can have their own floors, too, when they're not off doing super secret stuff that I know absolutely nothing about. You can't have a super secret club without a clubhouse. I'll even let Coulson visit, if he wipes his feet on the mat."

"Huh. Well, like I said, the Captain can go where he wants. It's up to you to persuade him." He nodded at Natasha. The expression on his face was very nearly a smile. "Good day, Agent Romanov." And then Fury left.

Tony looked at Natasha. "I've been set up, haven't I?"

Natasha smiled innocently.


	2. Steve POV 1

The worst thing about living in the future, Steve thought, was that he wasn't really living in it. He was on the outside, looking in. It was worse than the war, even when he had a mission on his own, and didn't know the language too well. At least then he knew being out of place was only temporary.

SHIELD had kindly (yeah, he knew they had reasons of their own, it wasn't charity) given him a cash stipend and a studio apartment in Brooklyn. There were places that looked so much like he remembered it took his breath away, but they were scattered. Heck, whole streets and neighborhoods were gone. Fulton street was only a little remnant; department stores and movie houses that had been there forever were gone, leaving behind the occasional sign or advertisement painted on the bricks. The El in downtown Brooklyn was gone. Some of the loss wasn't bad, as such. Entire blocks in downtown Brooklyn had been torn down and turned into a nice park named after Samuel Parkes Cadman, a Methodist minister who'd died a few years ago... no, wait, he died a few years before Steve went to war. Brooklyn needed more green space, Steve couldn't complain about that, but even when things were an improvement, he kept regretting the loss of the buildings, the streets, the people, he used to know.

There were cars everywhere, and everyone was so wary. Kids didn't run around on their own. Steve couldn't imagine a gang of scruffy kids playing kickball or peddling newspapers on these streets. Nearly all the buildings were taller, a lot taller, cutting down on the light and the air. Everything was just more cramped, and faster, and Steve felt like he wanted to run, but hadn't anywhere to go, like a lion in the Prospect Park Zoo. 

The zoo had been only a few years old when Steve saw it last. He went there, thinking to sketch some lions, but when he arrived he found they'd kept some of the exteriors of the buildings, but most of it was changed inside. And they didn't have any lions. Apparently zoos now specialized, and Prospect Park mostly went in for smaller, tamer animals. He asked about the lions, and was told he could go to the Bronx Zoo. He didn't want to go to the Bronx. But he didn't want to stay in this Brooklyn that wasn't Brooklyn, either.

So when a red and gold robot appeared on the street outside Steve's apartment house, Steve's first thought was at last he had something he knew how to do. He grabbed his shield and ran down the stairs. The elevator was too slow and besides, he didn't think of it. When he got down to the street, the robot was surrounded by people and it was... signing autographs? Back when Isaac Asimov's father ran a candy shop, Steve used to listen to Isaac plotting stories and some of it stuck with him. Isaac was a smart guy and a lot of the things he thought would happen in the future had come true, so maybe he was right about robots being commonplace workers and Steve just hadn't come across any.

"Do you follow the three laws?" Steve asked, holding his shield tightly.

The robot turned glowing eye slits towards Steve, leaned its shiny metal head back and laughed. It was a very human sounding laugh. "Oh, my God. That's perfect. Let me see. Um, well, I like to think I'm good on one and three, but two, not so much. I really, really don't obey orders." The robot made its way through the crowd and held out one armored hand to Steve. "I'm Tony Stark, Iron Man. You knew my dad."

"You're not a robot?" Steve couldn't decide which was more unlikely, Howard marrying and fathering a child, or Howard creating a robot that could pass for human.

"Not as such, no. Didn't Fury tell you about me?" The robot, not robot, kept his hand out, and Steve felt it was rude to ignore him. Shaking hands with a robot was pretty strange, but that was what things were these days, strange. It was strange standing here and having people take photographs of him and this metal man, using telephones that were nothing like the portable phones they'd used in the war. 

"No. Well, maybe. He gave me some folders, but I haven't looked through them all." Not after seeing 'deceased' and 'deceased' and... it was a bit much.

"Can we talk? In private?" The rob... Tony Stark... pointed upward. "I don't see anyone using the roof."

Even if Fury hadn't sent the metal man, it would be better to get it, him, away from civilians. "Sure." He looked at Stark. "How much do you weigh?"

"That's a very personal question, Cap."

God, the guy was flirting with him. Steve felt his face warm. Irish complexion never could hide a blush. "I just meant, I don't know if the stairs or elevator can handle you."

"Who needs stairs?" There was a strange noise, not terribly loud, and the metal suit rose, supported by jets of light from the bottom of its boots. "Meet you on the roof, Cap."

Steve tilted his head back to watch the suit fly. He didn't remember Isaac talking about flying robots.

 

Steve ran up the steps but he paused before he opened the door, listening. He didn't hear anything unusual, so he opened the door and went onto the roof. "Fury sent you? Has he got a mission for me?" Not that Steve wanted to be under Fury's command, but he was bored enough to listen to the offer. "Is the danger immediate?"

"No, nothing like that. This is just a meet and greet."

"If there's no danger, take off the armor so I can see who I'm meeting and greeting."

"Sorry. No can do. I am Iron Man. The suit and I are one. I am one of the good guys, you can call Fury and get him to vouch for me. But, anyway, what I really came here to do was to ask if you would be willing to consider joining the Avengers Initiative. That's Fury's super secret heroes club, membership by invitation only. Currently it's just me and two of Fury's top spy-assassins. They're scary, but I'm a real pussycat."

Steve frowned. He was so damn bored, it sounded attractive. "What does this Initiative entail?"

"It's pretty open-ended. We've got a mandate to take care of problems regular forces can't handle. Fury gives the orders, which, I have to admit, I don't listen to terribly closely. So far, there's been a giant green guy running around smashing stuff- I'd love to recruit him, once we find him- and a couple brothers from another planet had a family squabble in New Mexico which I mostly missed out on- there was a giant evil robot- _It_ never heard of Asimov- and a big blond guy with a electric hammer who seems nice, and maybe if he comes back to Earth we might get him on our side. 

"But we don't go out for anything the army can handle, so I figure most of the time we'll be sitting around my big, luxurious, beautiful tower- a floor for each team member, all amenities included- let me tell you about our state of the art gym, and the 24-7 gourmet food delivery, and uniforms and weapons all provided by yours truly. No scrimping at Avengers HQ."

"Wait, wait." Steve held up his hand. "I'm not for sale."

"I didn't think you were, Cap." The helmet tilted again. "My father used to talk about you all the time. He said you were the most stubbornly independent So-and-So he ever met. He may not have used those exact words. Incorruptible, honorable and just plain decent, that he definitely said. He also said you couldn't stand by when people needed protecting, even before you had the muscle to back it up. I can't either. No matter what Fury thinks about the Avengers, that's why I'm in it. To protect people. I happen to have enough money to support the Avengers Initiative and provide it with the tools to do the job, that's why Fury has agreed to let me host the team."

Steve nodded slowly. "I'll talk to Fury. If this is on the up-and-up, I'm in."

"Great!" Stark rose on his boot jets again. "Mid-town Manhattan, big beautiful tower, with Stark on the side. You can't miss it!"

"Huh," Steve said as he watched Stark fly away. 

 

Steve went back down to his apartment, and this time he looked at the folders Fury had given him. They only contained basic information, but then he hadn't expected secrets to be printed out for him to leave lying around a Brooklyn apartment, even one that SHIELD owned and presumably 'rented' to SHIELD staff and agents. Fury hadn't struck Steve as a man who left things to chance.

Peggy... Peggy was alive. Alive, married, widowed, a mother... a whole life lived without him. He was glad that she'd moved on, really he was. It had been wartime and circumstances... oh, hell. He still loved her. White hair and wrinkles and all. He would go see her later, once he'd got up the nerve. What if she didn't recognize him? What if she did and thought she was losing her mind? He put the questions aside for review once he'd gathered more information, turning instead to the folders on Howard Stark and his son, Tony Stark.

Again, they were barebones sketches. Steve guessed that Howard had married a much younger woman late in life. He assumed Tony had been treated like a crown prince, given every advantage, sent to the best schools and now had so much money he didn't know what to do with it, so he'd decided to play at being a hero. Still, Steve had said he'd talk to Fury, get some of the gaps filled in.

 

Steve hadn't expected to need a helicopter to talk to Fury. Where on earth was his office? Apparently not on 'earth'. Well out of sight of land, a battleship came into view. As they came closer, Steve saw it was an aircraft carrier. SHIELD must be a lot bigger than he thought, so why had Fury felt the need to recruit a civilian and an outmoded soldier instead of staffing it with his own people?  Steve was just a man, physically improved, but really no great military asset. Stark wore a flashy tin toy and bragged about not following orders. Surely there were better equipped people already devoting their lives to the military.

The Avengers Initiative was probably a commander's hobbyhorse, which explained why Fury was glad to offload the bills onto Stark. The accountant type they'd sent to fetch him, balding and unobtrusive in a gray suit, was definitely a Captain America fan. It was more than a little embarrassing to hear Coulson babble on about watching Steve sleep and designing a new costume for him. Dear Lord, he'd probably had his inseam measured by this man. Coulson wouldn't have taken liberties, or else he wouldn't be cheerfully telling Steve about it, but still, it gave Steve sympathy for Sleeping Beauty. 

A red-headed woman wearing a very provocative black leather outfit met the helicopter the moment they landed, ignoring the still whirling blades and the crew chocking and tying it securely on the deck. "Captain Rogers? I'm Agent Romanov."

Steve wasn't sure if he was still entitled to the rank. It had been a battlefield promotion, making the name they'd given him for publicity real, but after his seventy years inactive the government was now trying to decide whether he was a veteran, in which case he'd resigned his rank, or retired after a full career, in which case he was never technically separated from service and so kept it, but she was being polite, more polite than Stark with his 'Cap'. "That's me, ma'am," he replied. She was probably an officer, but none of the markings on her clothes were any rank insignia he knew. "I'd like a word with Nick Fury, if I might."

"The Director has been expecting you. Please watch your step, Captain."

"I've been on an aircraft carrier before," Steve said, mildly irritated by her smug attitude. Then giant engines turned on, huge fans rotated, and the battleship rose into the air. He peered over the side at the ocean shrinking below. "Ok, this is new."

 

"You've met Stark," Fury said without preamble or getting up from his chair when Romanov led Steve into an office that overlooked the flight deck of what Steve was thinking of as Robur the Conqueror's airship, 'Albatross'. "What did you think of him?"  

Romanov went around behind Fury's desk, to stand at his side.

"We only talked for a few minutes, but I got the general impression he's a well-meaning civilian," Steve said, prudently omitting the flirting and indiscipline. Fury knew Stark better than Steve, bad-mouthing him would get Steve nowhere.

"Yeah." Fury sighed. "He's a pain in the ass." Fury turned that one, dark, piercing eye on Steve. "I'm tempted to let you think that's all he is. There's people who don't like the Avengers Initiative. They especially don't like the idea of it operating without a strict line of command, and between you and me, Stark isn't controllable."

"Then why do you want him?" Steve smiled and leaned closer to Fury. "Why do you want me? Pretty sure my record for insubordination is out there."

"I want you, and misfits like Agents Barton and Romanov," at Fury's side Romanov smiled, as if that was the best compliment she'd ever received, "and God help us all, Tony Stark, _because_ you all think for yourselves and you don't need hand-holding. Maybe you'll fuck up, but I'd rather trust the people on the scene than a bunch of old farts who don't know what real action is like."

Steve thought about it for a few seconds and then he sat down at the visitors chair in front of the desk. "All right, I suppose I wound up with the Howling Commandos with not much more to go on. I'm assuming your agents have seen action, but what about Stark? I need to know he's not gonna freeze when push comes to shove."

Fury huffed, a short laugh. "I don't think that's gonna be a problem. Holding him back, that might be."  Fury pushed a metal briefcase, the kind Steve now knew was a computer, probably one able to do everything except sit up and bark, towards him. "This has more background on your team, their capabilities, their weaknesses. Not everything. You have any more questions, you ask 'em direct. They might even answer. Good luck, Captain." With that, Fury nodded, got up and left the room, going back down to the flight deck.

Steve looked at the computer and sighed. "Can you show me to a room where I can look this over, Agent Romanov?"

"Of course." She tilted her head and then led Steve out of the office in the opposite direction Fury had taken, deeper into the corridors. "I investigated Stark before Fury recruited him. Most of the recent information on him comes from my report."

"Oh, what do you think of him?"

"I can work with him."

 

"Well, what do you think?"

The sound of Iron Man's propulsion, whatever it was, was enough to warn Steve, so he didn't jump when Stark landed beside him, waving one metal hand at Stark Tower. "It's... big," Steve said, swallowing back his first impulse to compare it unfavorably with the nearby Chrysler building, but he couldn't resist adding, "from this angle it looks like a llama."

Iron Man was silent for a moment. "Oh, my God, it does. It really does. This is so embarrassing, I was trying for a giraffe."

Steve shook his head, smiling despite himself. "You'd need spots for that." He resumed walking towards the tower. Most of his belongings fit in a duffel bag, but the shield needed an oversize artist portfolio to conceal it. He wondered what it would be like to own more than you could carry. 

"I could do spots." Stark clumped along beside him, not as ungraceful as he would expect. "If you'd rather have a giraffe."

"No, no, a llama is fine." Steve wasn't entirely sure Stark wouldn't take him up on it, and sheathe the tower in scaffolding and painters. "I never met a llama I didn't like."

 

Steve had never really thought what it would be like to be rich, any more than he'd thought what it would be like to have wings. Now Steve had a floor all to himself, with automated cleaners, delivery of pretty near any kind of food he could imagine, and Jarvis to handle any request Steve had. Need new running shoes? _Place your foot here, sir, so it can be measured._ And then half an hour later, a gentle chime at the delivery chute and a brand new pair of shoes arrives.

He familiarized himself with the team first, next with major changes in the US and the world. The last seventy years had been packed full, with countries merging, breaking up, changing their names, their boundaries, their political systems, their alliances. Steve skimmed a few overviews of cultural, medical, and technological changes and after that decided he'd just note anything he didn't understand and ask Jarvis later. He could study all day long for years, or he could just get on with his life and learn to shrug it off when something made no sense. 

He worked out in the gym Stark had provided and he tried setting in motion the paperwork to get new identification but eventually gave up wading through a baffled bureaucracy and let Jarvis do it. He didn't know how, or if it was legal, but when the delivery chute disgorged a passport, driver's license, a handful of varied credit cards and, of all things, gift cards to coffee shops, all in his name, he accepted them gladly, because having them in his wallet made him more real, more attached to this world.

With all that, he still had more leisure than he knew what to do with. He went to the communal level, hoping he'd find someone, or at least something to do. The level was empty. "Jarvis?"

"Yes, Captain Rogers."

"Are there any real books or playing cards here? I'd like something I could hold in my hands."

"Certainly. The library has a collection of varied recreational facilities." Jarvis guided Steve to a door he hadn't noticed before, mainly because it was hidden behind a sculpture of twisted blue-white glass tubes set in the wall. The sculpture moved forward and then slid to one side, taking a section of wall with it to reveal a clean lined room with minimalist tables and chairs scattered around glass fronted cabinets full of books and boxes in various sizes. There was also a pool table, and a brightly colored juke box in the part of the room Steve could see.

Steve was amused. "How many hidden rooms are there in the tower?"

"Jarvis could tell you, but then he'd have to kill you," Stark said from inside the room. 

"I'm not that easy to kill," Steve replied, stepping into the library. 

"Jarvis likes a challenge. So, I gather you're looking for a game?"

"Sure." Steve walked over to the shelves loaded with boxed games and ran his finger down the glass, tracing the names. "You play backgammon?" Iron Man didn't reply. After a moment, Steve turned, eyebrows raised in question.

"Used to," Stark finally said. "Hey, how about chess? Dad said you gave him a good game." Without waiting for a reply, Stark opened the cabinet and took out a wooden box inlaid in dark and light wood to form a large letter S.  He set out a matching board and began placing the chessmen on a small gaming table. Each piece was obviously hand-carved, and there were tiny inset stones for eyes in the knights.

"That's a beautiful set," Steve said, "I'm almost afraid to use it." He brought over a chair.

"I suppose if a nice set puts you off your game, you wouldn't want to play with a jeweled gold one."

Steve paused, halfway into the chair and then sat down more heavily than he'd planned. "Why? Why would anyone want a jeweled gold chess set?" he asked plaintively.  Expensive cars and clothes Steve could almost understand because at least you got to show them off, but a game?

"Beats me," Iron Man moved a sturdy looking metal chair in place and sat down across from Steve. "I get invitations to buy all sorts of expensive crap, but you know, I don't need a nine point eight million dollar chess set to prove I have a lot of money. I know I have a lot of money. So I just buy what I like." Stark picked up a dark knight and rolled it between his metal fingers. "I like this set, it's functional and a lot more classy than the plastic sets Rhodey and I used at college."

"Rhodey?" Steve asked.

"War Machine. He has one of my old suits." Stark's voice sounded more mechanical than usual. He put the dark knight back in place. "You can have white and the first move."

Steve moved a pawn. "You shouldn't throw away an advantage like that, Stark."

"Eh, give me your best shot." The helmet tilted. "And call me Tony. After all, we're living together." 

And there it was, the flirting. Steve didn't mind. He waited until Tony was making his move to reply, "Cohabiting," he said solemnly, "to strengthen our relationship, Tony."

Tony cracked up, laughing. "My God, what have you been reading?"

"I love Google." Steve grinned.

 

 

The more Steve saw of Iron Man, the more he liked Tony. Underneath the armor there was a man who reminded him of Bucky, just as flirtatious and wise-cracking, just as protective and brave.

For their first mission the team went chasing after the green giant codenamed the Hulk. Steve was at first more than a little reluctant to offer Hulk a place on the team, but Tony was gung-ho for him. They'd studied video of Hulk in action, and Steve had to admit Hulk wasn't stupid;  he not only had a grasp of tactics, and physics, but also swift decision making abilities. 

Steve had pointed out that Hulk was only strong when he was angry. Tony had pointed out that when he wasn't angry, he was a genius. And well, they'd agreed that Steve would be the leader in the field, but Tony had joint decision making rights when there was time for discussion. So Steve agreed they'd try.

At first Hulk had seemed more irritated than really angry, casually swatting at the Avengers when they got close. He frowned like he was thinking about Steve's offer to join the team. He looked confused at Tony's jokes- and yes, Tony flirted with Hulk, too- but his muscles were relaxed. Steve could see Hulk was gradually calming down. They were only a few minutes away from being able to sit down and have a civilized discussion with Banner. If he didn't agree to join the Avengers, Tony intended to offer him transportation to any location he felt would be safe and to supply him with a lab and support to try to cure himself. Fury had reluctantly agreed that a neutralized, isolated, Hulk was better than a vengeful one running amuck at random.

Then some idiot of a general showed up with troops. They fired a pair of sonic cannons and Hulk went nuts, clawing at his head and pounding the ground and reaching wildly for things to throw at the cannons. Steve was in reach. Hulk threw Steve's shield, smashing one cannon, and then he picked up Steve.

Tony yelled and shot Hulk in the ass to get his attention, and then he hovered in front of Hulk. "Hey!" he shouted, "Iron is harder than squishy Cap! Throw _me_."

Hulk growled, dropped Steve and grabbed Tony. Steve's heart was in his throat as he saw Iron Man flung the length of the field, repulsors firing, but ineffective against Hulk's brute force. Tony landed on the cannon which broke in a spectacular display of fire and explosions. Freed, Hulk leapt away, smashing trees and buildings, and a few tanks along the way. The general shouted and his troops piled into more tanks and jeeps to follow.

Steve didn't pay any attention to the soldiers as he and Natasha and Clint ran to the smoking rubble; a heap of army green with Iron Man red and gold sticking out in places. "Tony!" 

"Ow," Tony replied, waving a gauntlet weakly. "Did anyone get the number of that bus?"

"Are you all right?" Steve tore at the tank, digging down to free Tony. The suit emerged, badly dented. "Where are the releases?" Steve ran his hands over the armor, looking for something that would move.

"Hey, no, bad touch." Tony flapped the same gauntlet. "You can't," Tony whispered.

Steve leaned in closer. "I can't what?"

"Can't take off the suit. I'm nothing without it."

Steve drew in a sharp breath. "What do you mean, like an Iron Lung?" Tony gave a brief nod. 

Natasha said, "Tony told me he can only remove it in his lab with Jarvis standing by with support."

"Jesus," Steve said. Then he nodded. "Natasha, get the quinjet; Clint, tell Fury what happened, get someone to track Hulk. We'll try again later." He put his arms under the armor, and lifted. Iron Man wasn't heavy; he was Steve's teammate. 

"Hey," Tony said, "Don't forget your shield. Dad made it. It's a collector's item."

"Your father created some amazing things." Steve kept walking. "But I'm pretty sure you're worth more than the shield."

"That's the nicest thing anyone ever said to me, Steve. You like me. You really like me."

Steve rolled his eyes. If Tony could flirt, he wasn't too badly hurt.


	3. Tony POV 2

"Jarvis," Tony said on his internal channel on the way back to the tower, "Non Plus Ultra." His armor was totaled, past the point of repairs.

"Agreed. Mark IV is being prepped for occupation."

"Aw, what about Mark VII? It's so pretty, I want Steve to see me at my best."

"That iteration has not completed testing."

"I could do without the spinning rims," Tony wheedled. "C'mon, Jay."

"Mark VI is however ready."

"I hate the triangle reactor cover," Tony grumbled. "I don't know what I was thinking of when I designed it."

"There was some mention of 'Doritos' and being Captain America's Corsican brother."

"Don't smart-ass me, Jay." Tony sighed. "Yeah, all right. Five can't fly, so let's go with Six. You bully me, you know that, Jay?"

"Indeed sir, it is my prime pleasure in life."

 

Tony was technically without limits, but the habits of a lifetime kept him tethered to at most half a dozen parallel processing lines of thought. So while he was playing chess with Steve, working on the blueprints of a more advanced LMD, fault-checking a project in S.I.'s medical prosthesis division, bopping along to AC/DC and playing with a skinny shelter tabby at ipetcompanion.com Jarvis was handling Tony's email.  Sifting out the spam that evaded the filters was a boring task. Sometimes Tony toyed with a scammer, if they had an interesting new take on the Nigerian 419 scam, but for the most part the stupid burned. Tony didn't need to go to a pay porn site to look at a hot Russian chick or an American Icon in the shower. Not that he would ogle Natasha or Steve without their permission. Really. In a weak moment he'd been tempted, but as Jarvis pointed out that would only lead to frustration, and crying manful electronic tears. Also, Jarvis refused to do it. 

Tony's two minute turn with the cat toys ended and he decided to spend a few minutes at the nicest place on the internet. Being virtually hugged by strangers was pathetic, and his dad would have been disappointed that Tony indulged in it, but dad had never been in Tony's position, so what did he know? Tony was being hugged by a young man who'd just signed 'I love you' when Jarvis interrupted on the internal band.

"Sir, I believe you would wish to reply to this message. It was sent to S.I.'s technical assistance email via an anonymous emailer through a proxy service."

"What? Hit me," Tony replied without paying much attention. Steve was about to checkmate, maybe. Tony had a way out, but it was risky. He made his move.

The email read, _"I would like to meet to discuss your offer. I apologize for messing up your suit. I'd offer to have it dry cleaned, if that wouldn't be an insult to a man of your means."_

Tony did the mental equivalent of frowning. "Is this a joke, Jarvis?"

"I do not think so, sir. Look at the signature."

"42616E6E6572. Banner in hexadecimal. Huh. Not the hardest code in the world to break."

"But neither is it one likely to occur to the military mind," Jarvis pointed out.

"True. Ok, send this reply. 'Have suit, will travel. Where do you want to meet?' "

_"GCG4D9. Bring a small prize in your suit. It's only fair."_

Tony didn't even need to search to know he liked the way Banner thought. "GCG4D9. I can be there in an hour. Can my friends meet you, too?" Using a geocache location definitely appealed to the geek in him and choosing the World Headquarters of the society for materials engineers and scientists made it perfect. It also helped that it was situated on 45 acres, giving plenty of room in case of a Hulk out.

_"Yes, but no uhlans. I'm allergic to them. They make me break out in a green rash."_

"Wow, he's really paranoid." 

"What?" Steve looked up from the board.

"Sorry, I didn't realize I was thinking out loud. Just got an email from Banner. He wants to talk. If we can meet him in Ohio without any soldiers tagging along I think we might get him on board."

 

Natasha landed the quinjet in the parking lot within sight of a large geodesic dome. "Did Banner say where to meet him?" Clint asked. 

"Not precisely," Tony replied. "Somewhere in the mineral garden. The building is closed during business hours, but the gardens and grounds are open to the public."

"Let’s do this quickly," Steve said. The remote farmland location played in their favor, as no visitors were apparent, but there were a few cars in the lot, probably belonging to picnickers. "Natasha, stay with the quinjet in case we need to follow Hulk in a hurry. Clint, don't use your tranquilizer arrows except as a last resort, we're trying to gain Dr. Banner's trust."

"I'm not even sure they'd take Hulk down," Tony said. "Might just get him angrier."

"Don't you think seeing your armor will anger him?" Natasha asked. Tony could tell she was sulking over having to stay behind and hoped to pass the piloting off onto him.

Tony waved a finger at her. "I see what you're doing, Romanov! You think your spy wiles will soothe a savage breast better than my native charisma."

Natasha gave Tony an eye roll. He didn't know why people kept doing that to him. She asked, "You don't think I might appear less threatening than a metal suit full of missiles?"

"If Banner was the type to fall for a honey trap, he'd have been captured a year ago. He's a scientist, we talk the same language."

"That's enough," Steve said. "Banner contacted Tony, he'll be suspicious if anyone else makes the initial contact. We'll be right behind you, Tony. Don't take any unnecessary risks. Don't get him mad."

"Why would he get mad? Everyone loves Iron Man!" Tony flung his arms wide. "Besides, I brought him a cool toy." He waved a tiny vinyl Funko Pop Iron Man Bobble-head figure.

"You can buy those for ten bucks," Clint said.

"This one's special. I autographed it."

Now Steve rolled his eyes. "Tony."

"Steve."

Natasha pushed Clint. "Take them and go. Stark is right, he is much less frightening than I am."

"Thanks. I think."

 

The mineral garden wasn't very large. There was a simple fountain in the center of a bare earth circle planted at intervals with small bushes, flowering plants and a single young tree. Small boulders of various types of raw ore were scattered evenly around. A scruffy looking man wearing a stained shirt and dull purple trousers too big for him sat on a bench. As Steve, Tony and Clint approached the man said, mildly, as if talking to himself, "This is a nice place, sort of a technological Zen garden. The fountain is made from copper, titanium and stainless steel. That little crabapple tree is a descendent of Newton's."

Tony held his hands out, silently urging Steve and Clint to stay back as he moved closer. "Dr. Banner?"

"For my sins, yes." Banner looked up at Tony. "And they are many."

Tony nodded. "Yes." He kept walking. "But your gifts could be many, too."

"Gifts." Banner laughed, and cut it off short. "Sure. You know, while I was wandering around here, looking through trash bins for a shirt, I found an inscription dedicated to..." He waved a hand vaguely, and continued, "someone to do with this place. I was bored, so I memorized it, 'Make no little plans: they have no magic to stir one's blood. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die'. Isn't that just lovely? Look what my big plans have done. They've stirred my blood, haven't they?"

"I'm not all that much for philosophy, Dr. Banner. We both fucked up, and now we have to live with the consequences. All the consequences, the good as well as the bad."

"What good? I'm an uncontrollable engine of destruction."

"So you're just going to wander around fighting armies until one day someone with a few brains figures out how to catch you and weaponize you? They'll keep trying, you know."

"I know," Banner said softly, "they've got another gamma-monster locked up already. I don't know why they want me, too. Aren't two horrible mistakes enough?"

"I don't think Hulk is horrible." Tony handed Banner the Iron Man toy. "Join the Avengers. Let Hulk become a hero and get his own bobble-head!"

Banner looked at the toy and then at Iron Man. "You're crazy, you know that?"

"It's a mad world, Banner, and sometimes it takes a madman to protect it. C'mon, put Iron Man in the geocache and let's go home."

"I never found it." 

"How hard did you try?"

"Not very." Banner stood up and put the toy Iron Man down on the bench. "All right. Sure, I'll pretend to be a hero. But only on condition that you provide me access to a lab and help me try to get rid of the monster."

"I'll do my best." Tony didn't think Hulk was a monster, but he could certainly understand wanting to be a normal man again. "But really, Hulk would make a great bobble-head."

 

"Hey, Bruce," Tony said a week later, walking into Banner's lab after checking with Jarvis that none of Bruce's current experiments was likely to explode, mutate or curdle if left unattended for a while. "Why don't you take a break? You play chess, right? I've got a three-handed board, so we could gang up on Steve, take down Captain America. It'll be fun." The tower was quieter than normal, because Natasha and Clint were off doing some little chore or other for Fury that neither Cap nor Iron Man were apparently suited for. Something about subtlety. Tony could do subtlety. You know, he had a stealth suit, but he felt Fury had a point about Cap. You really couldn't hide his light under a bushel, or even a baseball cap and Clark Kent eyeglasses.

Bruce finished jotting down a note before he looked up. Considering everything, Tony didn't feel he was paranoid to prefer paper over computers (after all, people were out to get him) but it was sad seeing a great man reduced to stone knives and bearskins. "Uh, no thanks. I don't want to risk really taking down Captain America."

"Pffft." Tony spread his gauntlets, dismissing the idea. "You're good, you've got it under control. Jarvis could play soothing sounds of nature, light a few lavender candles, whatever you need. Want a fluffy cat to pet? Or a puppy, no one can be angry when they have a puppy."

"No, really. I appreciate the facilities, and you know, if there's something too big for the Avengers to handle, I'll bring out the other guy, but I'm going to stay away from breakable humans."

"You don't mind me."

"Well, sure." Bruce took off his eyeglasses, and wiped them with a tissue. "I don't mind because I can't hurt you. It's a relief knowing that you're not really here, in person."

"What?" Tony said flatly.

Bruce blinked up at Iron Man. "Hulk isn't an idiot savant, but he can tell the weight of something he throws and he knows the approximate mass of gold titanium alloy."  Bruce leaned forward to tap against Iron Man's chest. "Even adding in the mass of essential circuitry and armaments, Iron Man doesn't weigh enough to contain an adult human." Bruce smiled. "Remote control. It's a good idea, keeps you safe. I don't think any less of you for that but I could see why you wouldn't want to advertise it, especially not to the Avengers."

"I'm not. You think I'm... no. I'm _not_ sitting in my man-cave at the keyboard, running an MMORPG with other people's lives!"

"I'm not judging you, Tony. You spend a lot of time and money on helping people, that's laudable. You don't have to risk your own life, too."

Tony made a strangled noise. "Jarvis. Tell him. No. Show him. Show him what happened."

"Are you certain you wish to do that, sir?" Jarvis asked.

"Yeah. Bruce will understand, if anyone would."

"What? What will I understand, Tony?" Bruce asked.

"Accidents and consequences." Tony opened the faceplate of the helmet. "You can't see me, but I'm here. All that I am, is here."

"Remote control," Bruce said again, peering into the suit.

"No. Just... watch. I'm going to go play chess with Steve. Jarvis will answer any questions you have." Tony walked out, and tuned out the sound of the photon collider charging. He'd watched the replay too many times, he didn't need to live through it again.

 

"Is Bruce coming to play chess?" Steve asked, looking up from the round, three player, chess board.

"Not today," Tony replied. "Want to watch a movie instead?"

"Sure, how about something that isn't on the 'Must See' list." Steve smiled. "I always feel like I should be taking notes."

"Ok, so... Jarvis, spin the wheel, put on a random movie that will teach Steve absolutely nothing useful." Tony waved at the far wall and a flat screen descended, covering the bookcases at that end of the room.

"Will 'Tropic Thunder' meet your exacting specifications?" Jarvis asked.

Tony thought about it. "Yeah. Steve already knows not to go full retard." 

"What," Steve said when the movie began with a rapper singing about Booty Sweat and Bust-A-Nut bars.

"Shh. Jarvis, popcorn," Tony said. "This is just the ads and coming attraction trailers." There was one advantage of living in the suit; Tony could see Steve's reaction without looking at him.

"These are ridiculous," Steve said firmly. 

"Uh huh." Tony was not watching Steve, not watching him very closely, because he had just remembered the last trailer, with the actor who looked like Tony. If he'd been blond and not as devastatingly handsome.

DUM-E trundled in with a bowl of popcorn, dropped it in Steve's lap, wheeped and settled next to Tony to watch the movie. "Head down, don't block Steve's view," Tony told him. DUM-E wheeped and bent his arm lower.

"Thanks," Steve replied around a mouthful of popcorn. He froze, with his hand halfway to his mouth as the blond non-Tony monk made sexy eyes at the dark haired younger monk. He stayed that way all through the minute and a half trailer. "Um, is that... did they..." And then the movie went into an over-the-top gory jungle combat scene. "What? Ok, that's... what the hell? Did they put a hydrant of fake blood in there?" Steve was outraged. "And why is the blond monk now a black soldier? What?"

Tony laughed. Steve threw the popcorn at him.

 

Bruce walked into the library. "So, Tony..."

"Yes?" Tony turned around. They had switched to Jarvis's next random 'non-educational' movie, 'Ladyhawke', because Tony couldn't stop laughing every time Steve told the actors in 'Tropic Thunder' "Language!"  'Ladyhawke' had Rutger Hauer in all his steely-eyed angsty prime. Tony liked tall blue-eyed blonds. Steve liked the music. Tony felt there was no accounting for taste. Steve looked up at Bruce and then politely turned his attention back to the movie. Steve was always very careful not to offend Bruce. 

DUM-E had a broom and was sweeping popcorn kernels into a dustpan, but since he didn't have another hand to hold it in place, the dustpan kept moving away. "Redecorating, I see." 

The dustpan wedged in a corner, and some of the popcorn made it inside. DUM-E made a triumphant wheep, dropped the broom and picked up the dustpan. The popcorn fell out. DUM-E drooped.

"You might have better luck with a vacuum cleaner, DUM-E," Bruce suggested. DUM-E perked up and rolled out of the room rapidly. In the movie, Rutger turned from a wolf into a man at the same time the female lead, whose name eluded Tony, turned into a hawk. Dramatic music. Emo eyes. Angsty reaching out. Fingers almost touching. Rutger flinging himself down, naked, yes, Tony noticed, crying out in a half-human howl as the hawk flew away. Bruce winced.

Steve said politely, "We could watch something else. I'm not really into fantasy."

"No, that's all right," Bruce said. "I just wanted to talk to Tony about one of his experiments."

"Oh, yeah?" Tony said, as nonchalantly as possible. "Sure. You want to kick around a few ideas?"

"I'm kinda stuck on my own project, so I thought a change of pace would be good. I'll meet you back in the lab. Jarvis is collating data." Bruce left after giving Steve a polite nod. 

"Right." Tony got up. "You don't want to watch the rest of the movie, Steve?"

"I'd rather go work out. I get antsy if I sit too long." Steve stood up and stretched, a long line of muscle moving under his tight t-shirt. Tony suspected Steve bought them small on purpose. Couldn't really blame the guy, getting to show off after years of no one being interested in looking at him. Rutger was being emo. Steve glanced back at the screen. "So, how's the movie end?"

"True love is magically triumphant."

Steve nodded. "Sounds right to me." He clapped a hand on Iron Man's shoulder. "I'll see you later."

"Sure." Tony tried not to dwell on the phrasing.

 

"Ok," Bruce said once they reached Tony's workshop/lab. "I haven't got far into it, but I'm operating on the assumption that all your equipment is accurate."

"I would be insulted on Jarvis's behalf, but yeah, first make sure your data is reliable." Tony tried to lean the armor and look relaxed. He didn't think he was very successful.

Bruce nodded. "The cameras showed the start of the event fairly clearly." Bruce tapped at a monitor showing the blue glowing 'plastic'. "Do you know what this is? It superficially looks like Cherenkov radiation."

"Yeah, I thought so, at first, too. Charged particles passing through a dielectric medium at a speed greater than the phase velocity of light in that medium- the 'shock wave' of a nuclear reaction. Whatever that blue material was made of, it reacted with the stream from the photon collider, but there was nothing above normal background radiation afterward." Iron Man waved and a holo appeared, showing streams of data.

"Right. There was no nuclear contamination, but it _was_ a shock wave resulting from particles traveling faster than light. You and Jarvis were both understandably caught up in handling the aftermath and providing a stable environment for your... I'm going to say 'Ego'... so while you studied all the data collected at the time of the incident, you failed to account for observer error. You didn't look outside the immediate."

"What? What did we miss?"

"This." Bruce brought up a data log of Jarvis's background processes. "At the next synchronization with the atomic clock at NIST Internet Time Service, your time was five seconds behind. Five whole seconds."

"That's... that's... I was going to say impossible, but you're right." Tony's thoughts raced, and he compared information with Jarvis. "Special relativity rules."

"Yes. There's also indications of a brief, massive, gravity surge. Adding the combined effects of ftl and gravity, it's not unreasonable to assume time dilation took place. Tony, I think your body traveled backwards in time."

Tony thought furiously. "If it happened once, it can be duplicated. And if we calibrate it correctly, we could retrieve _me_ the moment I vanished. I might even still be alive."

"I don't like to raise your hopes, though. It's all very well as a thought experiment, but this is an entirely new field. Neither of us is an expert in it."

"I don't know about you, but I'm highly motivated to become an expert."

Bruce looked thoughtful. "If... if I could go back, stop myself from completing the gamma ray experiment..."

"No!" Tony was quick to cut in. "You know the grandfather paradox. If you go back and change that, you won't wind up here, and you won't go back. At best, you'd split off a parallel universe, but there'd still be the original. Or, you know, maybe photons would protect their self-consistency in timelines and not let you do it at all. If we do this, we have to slide into the time stream with as little disruption as possible. I shouldn't be in the past, so retrieving me would heal any ruptures caused by small discrepancies, but deliberately changing a major event? No."

"You're right. I know you're right." Bruce sighed and scrubbed at his hair. "In the meantime, it'd be a lot easier for me to work with you if you weren't tied into the suit."

"Excuse you. The suit and I are one!"

"Jarvis and you are one. Jarvis has external controls for holos, so he can make you a blue frame visual, and, you know, directed force fields to simulate a solid body."

"Who told you I could make directed force fields?" Tony was annoyed, he thought that was a secret.

Bruce smiled in satisfaction. "You did, just now."

"Damn."


	4. Steve POV 2

Steve had been putting it off, but something told him it was time. _"True love is magically triumphant."_ It wasn't. He beat on a punching bag for a while, the whole time seeing Peggy's face as he remembered her, seeing Bucky, seeing all the people he'd lost to time. Peggy wasn't lost, not yet. No matter what happened, he had to try. He couldn't 'bottle out'. He remembered her saying that and the momentary confusion before he asked if she meant 'chickened out'. The Howling Commandos argued over it for days as to which was better, a chicken or a bottle. Steve smiled. They'd squabble over the most ridiculous things, but when it really mattered, none of them took the chicken or bottle way out. He wasn't going to start now. 

He showered and shaved, and combed his hair, got Jarvis to press his trousers and iron his shirt. He didn't want to make a big deal out of it, so he didn't put on a suit, but he had a nice blue silk tie that Tony said matched his eyes, and some cologne Tony had given him when Steve confessed that he only bought Old Spice because it was new in his day and it was a pleasant smell. Tony's gift was much nicer. Steve deliberately didn't try to find out what it cost. You don't look a gift horse in the mouth.

He decided to bring flowers, but didn't know which were Peggy's favorites, so on the way he stopped off at a florist shop for advice. "Excuse me," he said to the clerk behind the counter, "I need a bouquet for my best girl." Steve vaguely remembered his mother saying there was a 'language of flowers', a meaning coded into the colors and kinds of blooms. If there was a code, Peggy probably knew it. "I need something that says 'I will always love you' in... um... the language of flowers?"

The young man straightened, and looked Steve over. His eyes widened slightly, then he sniffed. "Of course, sir. But, if you don't mind, could you tell me the name of your cologne, I just love it."

"Um," Steve was a little taken aback. Was this flirting? "Clive Christian." It had sounded like the name of a man he met in London, so it was easy to remember.

"Oh. Well, then, may I suggest fifty long-stemmed red roses?"

"Fifty? Are you sure?"

"It's on the website. Look." The clerk turned the desktop monitor display so Steve could see it. "Red roses for love; fifty of them for 'my love is limitless'."

"Yeah, ok, then. Wrap them up good, I'll be taking them on my motorcycle." Steve pulled out his black Amex card.

 

Peggy was still Peggy. Still beautiful and brave. Steve couldn't stay long; Peggy got tired and became confused. She had recognized him, and made a joke about him cornering the rose market, and wanted to hear how he was doing. Was he happy? Did he meet people? She had held his hand and told him to take dancing lessons with someone young and pretty. Steve was all twisted inside. He was so glad to see her, but it hurt, too. After a few minutes she had blinked and greeted him again, and then the nurse had come in with a cup of tea, and Peggy had fallen asleep.

 

Steve returned to the tower, changed into workout clothes and went back to the gym. He wrapped his hands and he started punching the heavy bag. It was a good, strong bag. He kept hitting it until the bag was slippery with sweat, and possibly a little blood. The rhythm was good, feeling the force of the blows was good. He hadn't realized how angry he was at the unfairness of it all. Outwardly he'd accepted his situation, but inside, he was just so damn mad.

"Steve?"

Steve turned, panting, fists raised and ready to fight. Iron Man cocked his shining head (and Steve was suddenly a child again, lying in a sickbed and hearing his mother reciting to him, 

'A birdie with a yellow bill  
Hopped upon my window sill,  
Cocked his shining eye and said:  
"Ain't you 'shamed, you sleepy-head!') and Steve was punching, punching hard. He hit the armor in the chest and Iron Man staggered back a step.

"Woah, woah, hey, not bare-handed, Steve! Steve, stop, you're hurting yourself."

And then metal arms, surprisingly warm, wrapped around Steve despite his struggles. "Hey, hey, I've got you. I'm here. You're not alone."

Steve fought to get away, and then stopped struggling. His face was wet and his eyes burned. 

"I've got you," Iron Man said softly. 

Steve couldn't remember the last time anyone hugged him. He didn't realize until now just how much he missed simple human touch. How must Tony feel, locked away in his armor? Steve shook his head and backed away, Iron Man releasing him slowly. "I'm sorry, Tony. I didn't mean to fall apart on you like that."

"You're not a Stark, you don't have to be made of iron." Iron Man patted Steve on the shoulder. "I'm honored you trust me enough to show your human side." Iron Man's head tilted. "Wow, that sounded like a Hallmark card. We should go do something manly to make up for it. Bungee jump off the Verranzo-Narrows. Watch Arnold Schwarzenegger kick ass. Get tattoos. Well, you could get one, I could get Jarvis to paint me one. Oh, hey, yeah, one of those illusion tattoos, showing what's under the skin. I could go for that."

"I wish I could see you under the armor."

"That...that's just not... I can't, Steve. But...Bruce and Jarvis just came up with a way you could touch me without the armor. I can only do it in the tower, though."

"Can you do it now?" 

"Yeah. Close your eyes. I won't be able to talk out of the suit, so please, just trust me."

"I do, Tony." Steve closed his eyes. There were mechanical sounds, and the temptation to look was strong. He didn't care how scarred Tony was, but obviously Tony cared. He waited, and after a moment he felt the pressure of arms, more flexible than Iron Man's, going around him. Their chests met and he felt the prickle of beard along the side of his face. It was a tentative touch, and Steve moved slowly, not wanting to startle Tony. He said, "Thank you. I'm honored, too." Steve felt a little mean, because he knew Tony would have given a snappy response if he could. The hug was briefer than Steve would have liked, and then Tony moved away. There were more clicks and mechanical sounds, and finally Tony spoke.

"You can look now, Steve," Tony sounded sad.

Steve opened his eyes. Iron Man was standing in front of him, and the pose looked a little more slumped than usual. "I didn't hurt you, did I?" 

"No, I'm fine. It's just... I missed that. I try not to think about what I can't have."

"You can touch me any time, as much as you like, Tony." There was a pause, embarrassed at least on Steve's side, and then he decided he wasn't going to chicken out here, either. "I'd like it. I like you, Tony," he said, putting an emphasis on like, enough to make it clear what he was offering. "I'd be happy to touch you. To... help you out," he said awkwardly. He didn't know how you went about inviting intimacy even with a woman, and he'd never approached a man. Back in the day, the only people who were interested in him were men who wanted to treat him like a delicate little thing, like a hothouse orchid or a floofy lapdog, and he wasn't having any of that. Even Bucky did it sometimes. Peggy hadn't. She hadn't made any concessions for his weak body; she'd treated him like a man. So did Tony and for once Steve could be the strong one, the one to rely on. He liked that; he really hadn't had that even with Peggy, who was as tough as she was beautiful. And he liked Tony. Even if he never saw his face, he... admit it, he was attracted to Tony.

Iron Man stood there, absolutely still for a long moment, before replying. "I can't. Down there, it's just not possible." Iron Man waved his arms. "Don't go feeling sorry for me. It's fine. I was a playboy for years, I bet I had a lifetime's worth of sex." He turned to walk away, then paused, and said without turning back, "But, you know, the hug was great. I wouldn't mind doing that again. Maybe tomorrow?"

"It's a date," Steve said, smiling.

 

Things settled down into a routine over the next few weeks. Natasha and Clint returned from their mission close-mouthed and sporting a few bandages, so Steve had sparring partners closer to his level than a heavy bag or a man in armor. No one was crazy about the idea of sparring with Hulk, so Steve was fine with Bruce working in the lab with Tony instead. Fury visited once to give a sort of locker room speech, leaving Coulson behind as a placeholder, peacekeeper, babysitter- Steve wasn't quite sure what Coulson did, but Natasha and Clint were more relaxed after he arrived, and he didn't bring up watching Steve sleep again. He didn't even complain when Tony made Steve a new suit that he liked better than the one Coulson had designed. Steve visited Peggy a few more times and it grew easier, accepting they were different people now, but still loved each other, even though that had changed, too.

The Tony hugs became a daily event. It wasn't as if either of them had a real chance of a normal relationship, despite Natasha's attempts at matchmaking Steve. He appreciated her thoughtfulness, but he wasn't interested in one-night stands, and he didn't have the time to develop a real relationship. Plus, you know, he wanted someone to like him because he was Steve, not because he was Captain America, or because they liked the look of his body. It still didn't feel like the real Steve to him, like he was wearing a costume made of bone and muscle. He wanted someone who wanted the little guy with the short temper, the one who couldn't win a fight, but damn sure never gave up trying. He wanted someone who understood what it was to be called a hero when inside you knew you were just a guy doing his best. 

He wanted Tony Stark. Just because Tony said it was impossible didn't stop him. So there were limits to Tony's physicality, so what? It just meant that Steve needed to be more creative. He couldn't come right out and ask what was wrong with Tony, but he could explore a little when they hugged. Tony always wore something smooth and form-fitting under his armor, but he liked to imagine he felt the muscle beneath, liked to think that Tony responded to his touch even if it couldn't arouse him physically. 

"You know, Tony, doctors can do amazing things these days. You shouldn't give up. If not now, then maybe in a few years? Who knows? Maybe..." Steve had thought about this for a while. Tony didn't talk about Howard very often, and when he did, Steve had the distinct impression there'd been a lot of friction between them. "You know, Howard had samples of my blood. He studied it, there might be something in his records that could help?"

Tony pulled away, putting the suit back on. "You can look now."

"Tony?" Steve opened his eyes. 

"I already went through Dad's stuff, what there was of it. I think he destroyed some, and SHIELD stole more." Iron Man shrugged. "You're welcome to look through it, though. It's down in the workshop, in the messy part. The more messy part. With the large hole in the floor." Tony had lost his temper one day while trying to do something the armor didn't have the manual dexterity to accomplish. Jarvis had refused to repair it, citing security if unauthorized personnel were allowed into the lab, but Tony figured it was just an 'I told you so'.

"You have a hole in the floor in your workshop. Isn't that a hazard?"

"It's more of a reminder to observe proper lab procedures. I tried putting a string around my finger, but it fell off." Tony's attempt at levity also fell flat. 

"Tony..."

The Avengers' alarm rang out, interrupting Steve. "Jarvis! Situation report," Iron Man ordered as Steve ran to get his suit and shield. They'd have to continue this discussion later.

 

"You've got to be kidding me!" Iron Man said over the comms as he led the quinjet to the coordinates Fury had provided. "The Living Laser has kidnapped the Wasp? Who kidnaps a wasp? Why? And why are we going to Costa Verde to get it? Aren't American wasps good enough for the King?"

"You haven't heard Fury sing," Clint remarked, "or you wouldn't call him the King."

"I don't mean Elvis! 'In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is King'," Iron Man said, smirking audibly.

Steve shared a sympathetic look with Natasha, who was piloting the quinjet. 

Bruce groaned. "That's terrible."

"You're right," Iron Man replied. "Fury would probably love to be called King."

"Chatter," Steve said, without any real hope of stemming the nonsense, but it had to be said.

"The Wasp is a costumed vigilante with the ability to shrink, in which form she has wings able to support flight," Natasha said. "She also has biologically derived electrical 'stinger' shocks." Natasha paused. "She's the one who suggested the name 'Avengers Initiative', but she turned down Fury's offer to lead the group because it would interfere with her career as a fashion designer."

The male Avengers were silent. Steve was going to need a minute to digest that information. Tony was quicker to recover his aplomb. He said, "Ten bucks says her costume is black and yellow spandex."

 

The Wasp's costume was indeed yellow and black. When they arrived she was having a spirited discussion with the Living Laser. She wasn't shrunk down, but she was only a little over five feet tall, and looked tiny next to the broad-shouldered man in a garish costume that looked like a hybrid pirate, cowboy, trapeze artist with a helmet resembling a giant mustache caught in a spiderweb. It was fairly obvious the guy wasn't in his right mind, Steve thought. You had to be nuts to wear that in public. 

"Orange and green is a horrible combination, Arthur," the Wasp said, "You can't impress a girl by dressing like a pumpkin. Unless it's Halloween."

"Aw, he's just a badly-dressed lunatic," Iron Man complained. "I thought the Living Laser would be, you know, shinier and more sciency."

Bruce said, "Don't underestimate him, Iron Man."

Wasp said, "and what is that yellow and black zigzag shirt? A reverse Charlie Brown?"

The Living Laser shuffled his big orange pirate boots and scowled before crossing his arms over his chest. "Your costume has yellow and black zigzag."

"But not like jumbo rickrack. That's so 1960's," the Wasp told him. "Look, let me get back to my shop and I'll design you something really stylish."

Steve was a little disappointed to have come all this way for a fashion lesson, but at the same time he was glad the Wasp wasn't hurt, or even particularly frightened. "Team, let's take this easy, give Wasp a chance to talk him down."

"NO!" Arthur shouted and backhanded the Wasp. She was taken by surprise and crumpled to the ground. 

Bruce gave a grunt, and closed his eyes, visibly fighting not to Hulk out. 

Steve didn't have to give any orders. All of them except Bruce leaped out of the quinjet to run at Arthur; Clint putting arrow to bow, Steve winding up to throw his shield, Natasha's Widow's bites sparking a furious blue. Iron Man, already in the air and hovering, beat them to Arthur by a fractional second.

Arthur raised his arms, bending his wrists so the studs on his clumsy looking gauntlets were on top. Steve recognized the move for its similarity to Iron Man's repulsors. Iron Man must have realized it too, because he jerked sideways, trying to avoid the converging beams of red light that came from the gauntlets. Iron Man flew past Arthur in a shower of red laser and blue repulsor light fireworks, distracting him long enough for the rest of the team to take him down and knock him out. Clint tied him up while Natasha stood over them, looking around for any other hostiles.

Steve paused to kneel beside the Wasp. She was unconscious, but didn't seem badly hurt. His knee hit something hard and he looked down. Iron Man's left gauntlet lay on the ground, cleanly cut off at the wrist. He stared in horror. There was no blood, though. He picked up the glove, and to his relief there was no hand inside, either. There must have been some sort of failsafe, Steve thought. There must be.

"Tony!" Steve yelled, looking around wildly. "Tony! Are you all right?"

"Fine, Cap," Iron Man replied. He was hovering, using only his right hand repulsor for balance. His left arm was at an awkward angle, held behind him.

"Tony, let me see your hand," Steve said, trying to keep his voice steady.

"Um." Iron Man landed, and his helmet turned, looking from one Avenger to another before finally facing Steve directly. "It's fine. Really."

"Tony."

Iron Man held up his left arm. The metal ended at the wrist, in a fused blob. "Would it help if I said I was right-handed?"

Bruce came up now. He was a little green around the edges. "Tony, you have to tell them."

"Yeah. Yeah, I know. But not here. When we get back to the tower." Iron Man took off, ignoring Steve's shouted orders.

"What the hell?" Clint said, looking into the sky.

Natasha stared after Iron Man and then shook her head. "He's right about one thing, this is no place to discuss it." She indicated the armed troops that were heading towards them. "Arthur must have made friends."

Steve nodded reluctantly. He picked up the Wasp, leaving Clint to haul Arthur into the quinjet. He waited until Natasha had taken off and it seemed unlikely an air force was mobilizing to attack them before turning to Bruce. "Tell me," he said without preamble.

"It's Tony's secret, not mine." Bruce got a first aid kit out and laid it down next to the Wasp. "I think she'll be coming around in a few minutes, so I can't tell you much. Tony's not hurt. We're working on his ... problem... it's complicated." He grimaced. "Tony would say it's 'sciency'. There really wasn't anything you could do to help, and he was afraid how you'd react... how you'd all react," Bruce added, looking around at Natasha and Clint who were silently listening, with very judgmental expressions. 

"We're a team," Steve said. "We should work together as a team, with no secrets between us."

"Everyone has secrets," Bruce said.

"The time for this one has passed," Steve replied firmly. 

The rest of the flight went by awkwardly. The Wasp woke, and, except for a sore jaw and a headache, was in good spirits. She was apparently very quick to assess the atmosphere, and chattered cheerfully about fashions and minor villains she had met, and how cute Nick Fury looked in a pink wig at a charity fundraiser. The distraction wasn't really enough, but Steve was grateful for her attempts.

They dropped her and their captive off at the helicarrier, and then returned to the tower.


	5. Tony POV 3

"Stupid, stupid, stupid," Tony muttered as he brought Iron Man in for a landing at the tower. He'd pushed the speed close to the limit, so he had a little while before the quinjet could arrive. "God, I wish I could have a drink."

"Sir," Jarvis said, "may I suggest we repair the armor before indulging in hysterics."

"You have your priorities, I have mine." Tony headed Iron Man toward the workshop.

 

DUM-E and U were already agitated when Tony arrived, having picked up the news from Jarvis on the way. Tony paused to reassure them. "It'll be fine, kids, don't worry. There may be some yelling and things getting thrown, but no explosions. DUM-E, put down the extinguisher and bring me a spare left gauntlet. No, my left, not your left."

Working helped to relax his mind, as always. DUM-E was non-helpfully helpful and the familiarity of that was soothing, too. Despite DUM-E's best efforts, Tony finished repairing the suit and had time to pace before the quinjet landed. He decided to meet the jet, rather than make them look for him.

Steve was the first one off the quinjet. He strode up to Iron Man and demanded, "Well?"

"Uh, I can explain. I will explain." Tony waved his gauntlets. "See, all better?" Steve folded his arms and looked stern. "Yeah, ok, didn't think that would cut it. Look, guys, can I have a minute alone with Steve? Bruce, Natasha, Clint, I know, I know, tell all, details to follow in the lab. I'll even make up a Powerpoint."

Bruce shook his head. "Yeah, all right." Clint and Natasha went with him. Being sort of spies, they probably felt professionally hurt not to have known Tony's secret, but with Steve it was personal.

"Steve. Just... trust me this one more time. Close your eyes."

[](http://www.ipernity.com/doc/eclectic-house/41804226)

Steve blew out an exasperated breath, but then, he did close his eyes. Tony took off the helmet and touched Steve's face with the gauntlets. Steve didn't flinch. Tony moved closer and kissed Steve. 

[](http://www.ipernity.com/doc/eclectic-house/41808562)

The biofeedback was limited. Jarvis tried, oh how he tried, but he'd never had a body of his own, so Tony knew he was kissing Steve, knew Steve could feel the delicate shapes of the force field, but all Tony had in return was a vague sense of pressure and warmth. He released the rest of the armor, but kept the under suit. The holo projectors here weren't as refined as the ones in the lab, but Jarvis could manage a white outline and hazy gray cloud to shape Tony's features.

On the internal circuit, Tony asked Jarvis to project his voice from the discarded armor. It couldn't seem to come from his holo, which is why he'd never done it before when he indulged in his Steve hugs. He hugged Steve one last time, and then stepped back. He said, out loud, "I love you, Steve." 

"What?" Steve's eyes flew open and then widened. "Tony, is this some sort of joke?"

"No. I'm sorry. I told you it was complicated, and really, it seems impossible, I know."

"You're a... a ghost?"

Tony scowled. "No. I'm just... sort of divided. My mind, what makes up _me_ is here, as a computer program. I'm subletting from Jarvis. My body is... mislaid?"

"Mislaid." Steve reached out to lay his hand tentatively on Tony's shoulder. "I can feel you."

"Force fields. It's a sophisticated illusion, a re-creation Jarvis provides to give me a sense of physical identity. There was an accident... I was trying to create a new element." Tony indicated the blue glowing light in his chest. "The substance that powers my suit, and incidentally kept me alive, was poisoning me. My dad had hidden clues to a theoretical element that should have worked instead. But... my hand slipped and... my body is lost. Somewhere in time. Quite possibly it's still alive."

Steve ran a hand through his hair. "Ok." He paused. "No, it's not ok. Wait." He looked up. "You love me?"

Tony shrugged. "Yeah. 'Fraid so. Can't be physical attraction, so what else can it be? You know, once you've eliminated the impossible whatever..."

"Shut up, Tony." Steve put his arms around Tony and kissed him again. "We'll figure this out. Together.

Tony had Jarvis reassemble the suit around him, except for the helmet, which he carried under one arm. He led the way down to the lab with Steve walking beside him, one hand on the armor's shoulder. 

Natasha said something that sounded distinctly unflattering in Russian. Clint just blinked and said, "Ok. That's a new one."

"I goofed, all right? Sent my body into the past, and my mind is stored in Jarvis's servers." Tony waved his gauntlets. "Could have happened to anyone."

Natasha's eyes narrowed. "I don't think your definition of 'goof' is the same as mine."

Clint came up and poked at Tony's head. He looked relieved when his hand didn't go through. "Bruce told us you'd been zapped by a blue rock?"

Tony looked at Bruce, who shrugged and said, "That's what he took away from it." Then Bruce smiled, one of his smug little shit grins. "The floor is yours, Tony. You explain it."

"Fine. Great. I will. Jarvis! It's showtime!" A holographic 'board' appeared in the middle of the room, and Tony began. "It's really simple. Everyone here knows Einstein's theory of general relativity, right?"

"Sure," Clint said. "Is there gonna be popcorn with this?"

"DUM-E's on popcorn duty, go ahead, live dangerously," Tony replied. "Right, now that we've got the serious questions out of the way."

Natasha held up her hand. "Do we really need to know Einstein's theories? Those of us who aren't theoretical physicists would probably be better working at this from the practical side."

Tony flung his gauntleted arms up high. "Everything is physics! How can I explain without it? Brrruuuuce. Please, help."

Bruce took off his glasses and rubbed them with his shirt tail. "Um, a beam of cohesive light intersected a substance which we speculate is comprised of strange matter, however, due to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle... oh, first we need to discuss wave particle duality and the DeBroglie hypothesis and of course, Planck's constant." 

"Bruce," Tony said, "it's a pleasure to hear someone speaking English."

Steve shook his head. "Tony, please. Pretend you're explaining it to DUM-E."

"Oh, yeah. I can do that. Light particles accelerated faster than the speed of light actually go back in time. Gravity also bends time- this has been proven with GPS satellite technology. The effects of gravity, as well as the satellites' increased speed above the Earth relative to observers on the ground, made the unadjusted clocks gain 38 microseconds a day. Normally, the effect is undetectably small, but I hadn't counted on Dad's experimental plastic being some sort of power source. It..."

"What?" Steve interrupted. "Something of Howard's was involved?"

"Yeah. It disappeared at the same time as, well, me. I had dismissed it as a failed polyresin sample. I had no idea it was one of his bad boys. Everything dangerous was supposed to be safely locked away with triply redundant warnings, not forgotten in a trunk of memorabilia in Fury's attic."

"What did it look like, this 'bad boy'?" Steve asked.

"Jarvis, run the video," Tony said. He edged away, not wanting to watch it again, especially not with an audience.

"Stop it there, Jarvis," Steve said sharply just as Tony lost control and the light struck the blue cylinder lying on a shelf. "Can you enlarge it? Focus in on the glowing object... yeah. Like that. Go back to just before... right. Stop!" Steve moved around the holo-vid, studying it from all angles, while the others watched him. "I've seen this before," Steve said, poking at the image, "it was one of the 'batteries' the Red Skull made. I gave it to Howard. He said it was like nothing he'd ever seen before. He started to test it, and it knocked him on his ass."

"But it didn't knock him back in time," Tony pointed out.

"No, but I saw the weapons used-- they vaporized people." Steve's eyes widened. "Or maybe they were sent through time?"

Tony said quietly, "Split like me, but without Jarvis to hold their minds. Wherever their bodies wound up, they'd be mindless."

"Looking for brains," Clint said. "Zombies are real?" 

"I'm going to pretend you didn't say that," Natasha said.

"Let's all pretend that," Bruce added.

"And get back to the big picture," Tony said. "Steve, what do you know about this 'battery'?"

Steve frowned. "It was something to do with the Tesseract."

"Tesseract? Wait, you mean there actually is a hypercube?" Bruce interrupted. 

"Folded through four dimensions, touching all of them," Tony added.

"And the fourth dimension is TIME," Bruce completed. Everyone was looking back and forth between Tony and Bruce.

"FUCK," Tony said. "I've SEEN it. Well, a drawing. It was in one of Dad's notebooks. I thought it was just speculation." Tony looked around wildly. "Check the trash cans, check everywhere. I threw them out in California, but Jarvis had the entire contents of the lab moved here. Unless DUM-E ate it, it should still be here."

 

"It doesn't say much," Bruce remarked after Clint came up with the notebook and they found the drawing of the hypercube. 

"No, but see this..." Tony pointed out neat, small letters at the bottom of the page 'DFL'. "Dad always put that to indicate 'drawn from life', on rough sketches of actual models. He _had_ the Tesseract in his possession. Jarvis! Search all the records, bad boy inventories, everything, find out what happened to it, with an emphasis on its current location; look under hypercube, tesseract, cosmic cube, Red Skull, anything possibly relevant."

"In the meantime, let's make sure we haven't overlooked anything," Steve said. 

They turned the workshop upside down while Jarvis searched. "I regret to say, sir," Jarvis reported several minutes later, "that I have found nothing matching the search parameters that could refer to the object in question."

Tony wanted to blast something with his repulsors. "Great, just great." Tony kicked the nearly empty trunk. "Thanks, dad. Oh, but hey, look, he left me a first issue Captain America comic book!" Tony threw the book in frustration and aimed at it.

"NO!" Clint shouted. He jumped past Tony to grab the fluttering comic book.

"What the hell?" Tony yelled. "I could have killed you."

"LOOK! Just look!" Clint opened the comic book. Inside the front cover, in Howard's handwriting, was another sketch of the hypercube, along with the words, "Steve, believe 2010 Peggy."

Tony was still frustrated. "What? It's just a scribble."

"With this year on it," Natasha said. She turned to Steve. "You've been visiting Peggy Carter. Has she said anything about Howard Stark?"

"Sometimes. We talk about the people we knew, of course," Steve said. "But she never mentioned the cube."

Natasha persisted. "Has she ever mentioned anything about Howard Stark that didn't make sense to you?" Natasha tilted her head in the direction of the pile of movie reels. "Bruce told us the way he hid the instructions for making the new element."

Steve's brow tightened, in obvious concentration. "There is one odd thing she mentioned several times. She said 'Howard built a crooked house for Tony in 1941'. I thought... I don't know, she got confused, sometimes."

"Jarvis?" Tony asked, feeling a ridiculous surge of hope.

"Sir! In 1941, a short story 'And he Built a Crooked House' by Robert Heinlein was published, postulating the existence of a house built as a tesseract net, which collapsed in an earthquake, forming a true tesseract, thus trapping the inhabitants in closed loops, until they discover that the secret to exiting lay in their state of mind."

"Well," Tony said, "sounds like a good story, but what does that have to do with me?"

"If you would permit me to finish, sir!"

Tony waved his gauntlet. "Fine, fine. I love the classics. Go on."

"There is, in SHIELD's possession, an artifact coded 'Crooked House'."

"Jarvis," Tony said into the sudden silence. "Does this mean I have to be nice to Blackcoat the Pirate?"

"I fear so, sir."

"Arggh."

"It wouldn't do any good," Coulson said from somewhere behind Tony despite the fact that he hadn't been there a minute ago.

Tony yelled and shot up to hover, circling around until he saw Coulson standing in the doorway to the lab. "Who invited you?"

Coulson smiled thinly. "I live here, remember? The director cannot lend you the Tesseract. His hands are tied and if you request it, security will be increased to the point where it would be impossible for even top level agents, such as Romanov and Barton, to retrieve it from the secret location where it is being studied by Professor Erik Selvig."

"I know Selvig," Bruce said, startled. "I thought he'd disappeared."

"He thought the same of you." Coulson glanced at his watch. "We're on a tight schedule, I haven't time to explain in detail. Selvig has accepted your invitation to lunch today. The quinjet has the coordinates. Neither of you can discuss classified projects, of course, but his latest paper on the feasibility of constructing an Einstein-Rosen bridge overlaps with your areas of expertise, and you ought to be able to stretch lunch out for a considerable length of time." Coulson opened a large silver briefcase, extracted a folder and handed it to Bruce. "Selvig's paper. Study it en route." He turned to Clint. "You're familiar with the Project Pegasus facility in New Mexico."

"Yes, sir," Clint said.

Coulson showed Clint a pair of black gloves, lying in the case. "Do not touch the Tesseract with your bare hands. Ideally, do not think of anything until you have it switched with the duplicate inside this case." He handed Clint the case. "If necessary, you and Agent Romanov will temporarily neutralize any opposition, but the optimal scenario would be for its _temporary_ absence to go unnoticed. It is a loan, not a gift, Stark."

"How the HELL did you know all this?" Tony asked, having recovered from surprise when he was directly addressed.

"Howard Stark didn't just leave you a home movie, and a comic book," Coulson said. "He left messages with the directors of SHIELD, in trust until the proper circumstances arose."

"How did Dad know..." Tony shut his mouth and then opened it again. "The only way he could have known is if we succeed in going back in time."

Bruce said quietly, "We only know that he learns about the future to this point. Someone could go back and tell him this much, and yet fail to return your body to our time."

"You know what I love about you, Bruce? You're such a little ray of sunshine."

"We can do it, Tony," Steve said. He turned to Coulson. "I'll be the one going back," he stated as a fact. 

"Wait, why you?" Tony protested. "Why not Agent? What? He just waltzes in, gives orders and then goes back to sucking Piña Coladas?"

Coulson said, "For obvious reasons, Howard Stark must be told what information he'll need to pass on, so the traveler has to locate him in possession of a Tesseract before attempting to reach Tony Stark."

"Still no reason Agent can't go," Tony said. He really hated the idea of sending Steve into the past.

"I don't pretend to understand the math," Coulson replied, "but Howard Stark speculated that a person could only travel along their own time line, using the Tesseract to locate a past version of itself somewhere along that timeline. Mr. Stark surrendered custody of the Tesseract to SHIELD over sixty years ago." He spread his hands. "Captain Rogers is the only one..."

"Hey," Steve interrupted, "Tony's not sixty years old, so ..."

"My body won't be there, damn it," Tony said.

"Howard Stark's notes on that were vague, but he did say there was a way to get around that problem," Coulson replied. "Presumably it was something he felt too sensitive to risk premature disclosure. I have no idea what it was. I'm just the messenger boy." He looked annoyed. "And, for the record, I don't like it. You, Mr. Stark, are going to have to figure out how to duplicate your original experiment, without losing Captain America or the Tesseract in the process. So stop whining, and get to work." Coulson turned to Steve and smiled. "Good day, Captain." And then he left. Tony stared after him.

"And that's why we love Coulson," Clint said. 

Natasha shrugged and smiled in agreement.

 

"All right." Tony turned to Steve as soon as they were alone. "Here's the thing... we all just assumed you'd be willing to risk your life for me. No one asked you what you thought about it. You didn't sign up for this."

Steve smiled. "I never did anything I didn't want to, in my whole life."

"But... even if it works, you'll be going into the past, so close to... to everyone you lost. And you'll have to leave again."

"I know." Steve sighed. "But I don't belong there any more. This is my home. You made it a home for me, and it's... it's where I fit in. I hope I get to talk to Peggy, get to see her and tell her I'm glad that she moves on. I'll always love her and I want her to have her life without regrets. But I love you, too, and I want to have my life with you. Here and now."

"Close your eyes."

Steve quirked a sideways grin and obeyed. 

Iron Man put his arms around Steve, and Tony kissed him. "I love you so much."

 

"This would be so much easier with Bruce," Tony grumbled. He had a multitude of holo windows open, with data from the failed experiment, time theories, newspaper articles about Howard Stark, and excerpts from a few published papers. "If Dad wanted me to know what I'd need to save my ass, why didn't he put it somewhere I could find it?"

Steve set down the pot of coffee he'd just made. "Where would you like to find it? I'll tell Howard when I go back."

Iron Man slumped. "You are handling this much better than I am. Yes, that's a genius idea. Um... it's got to be something I can find, but something no one else can, because hey, time travel, not a toy for general distribution. Um..." Iron Man straightened. "Hey. Dad invented and taught me a prototype internet coding language, way before HTML. We made a few games before he decided it wasn't going to be profitable and abandoned it without showing it to anyone else. Jarvis, see if any STARKODE programs are in the archives."

"Will they run on current systems?" Steve asked. 

"Yeah, no, obsolete as dinosaurs." Tony grinned. "But hey, turns out birds are dinosaurs. So, yeah, Jarvis, show us what you've got."

"Immediately, sir."

A maze, white lines on black, formed in the central holo. A small, simplified human figure stood at the entrance, holding a simplified sword in one hand. In the center of the maze an equally simple dragon stood before a pile of yellow boxes with 'Gold' written on them. "Cool. Ok, don't run it. Just... bring up the coding. Show the hidden comments. Extract and collate from all the STARKODE programs you can find. Match up any logical sequences."  The maze vanished and the holos filled up with scrolling lines of textual code, white on black.

"Hidden comments?"

"Yep, you know, notes you jot down that don't run. Usually they're notes describing what the code's supposed to do, but they can be anything, including jokes." Tony pulled his gauntlets together. The textual codes 'leaped' to the center, and scrolled in a blur, parts disappearing, other parts overlapping, spreading, gaps filled and finally the movement stopped and the color inverted to black on white. "Thanks, Jay. And there we have it. Oh. Yeah, this is weird. He's talking about things you tell him, that I figured out, and now he's telling me."

"Chicken and the egg?" Steve said.

"Ouroborus serpent- no beginning or end. Ok, fine, philosophy later. When the Spy Twins return with the MacGuffin we need to be ready. Time at this end is limited, we really don't want anyone knowing the Tesseract's gone walkabout. Dad says it's an infinite series linked up through all possible dimensions, which is why it's so powerful. He also says... wow... it's alive? A little? I don't know. He says someone in the future tells future me... whatever, I don't even want to think about how future me tells Dad... in this form, the Tesseract's an immature being, and is affected by anyone who comes in contact with it. As it matures it takes on traits from those who had touched it or even had strong thoughts in its vicinity, which is why the gloves and sending Clint who has no thoughts."

Steve grimaced. "The Red Skull had it. I think he only touched it once, but I can't be sure."

Tony was silent for a moment. "You're going to have to be very careful. It looks like a strong enough will can get it to actually change reality. You have to know exactly what you want it to do. Stay focussed."

"Don't think of a white bear."

"Yeah. Ironic Process Theory. Don't try to avoid certain thoughts, just... like going on a mission, that's all there is. Nothing else."

"I can do that," Steve said. "Don't worry."

"Good. Good, yeah, we're good. So, once we have one Tesseract reflection, you hold it in your hands, and you hold a clear picture in mind of Howard at the age you remember him, in his Manhattan workshop, with the other Tesseract."

"What's the workshop look like?"

"It's at 890 Fifth Avenue- a city block long three story mansion. It's been mothballed for years, kinda a white elephant- I never wanted to do anything with it, but I also didn't want anyone else to occupy it. You know, memories." Tony shrugged. "I've got all I can from the notes. Wanna fly to the mansion and check out the workshop?"

"The quinjet is gone."

Tony grinned, and then put the helmet back on. "Iron Man Air, at your service. C'mon, hug and fly."


	6. Steve POV 3

Steve had looked at the workshop with Tony and they'd gone over a photo album of really old photos of Howard in the shop taken by the family butler, Tony said, until Jarvis announced that the quinjet was approaching the tower and they hastily flew back to meet it.

After that, everything went so fast, with Clint practically throwing the silver briefcase at Steve and the Tesseract... well, Steve could _feel_ it even inside the case. It was excited and it wanted to go now now now and there were hints that it would throw a tantrum like a petulant child, only most children don't have the ability to remold reality and wipe you out of existence. Tony was yelling last second advice when Steve yanked off his right glove and picked up the Tesseract in his bare hand thinking very firmly of Howard and the workshop and another Tesseract.

"Well, this is embarrassing," Steve said. He carefully put the Tesseract down on the nearest worktable, freeing both hands to place in front of his crotch. Tony hadn't had a chance to warn Steve that his clothes wouldn't travel with him. "Hello, Howard," Steve said brightly. "It's a little chilly in here, don't you think?"

Howard looked like he was about to faint. His eyes were huge and his face was paper white. "The hallucinations usually are scheduled later in the evening's events," he said. He glanced down at the tumbler in his hand and put it down on the workbench, between the two Tesseracts.

"You're not drunk or imagining things, Howard," Steve said. He laughed. "Why would you imagine me naked, anyway?"

Howard rolled his eyes, "Who wouldn't? I mean... you're a fine figure of a man," he added, smirking, and looking nervous, too.  For a moment he looked so much like Tony it took Steve's breath away. 

"It's the eyes," Steve said out loud. "You have Tony's eyes. Well, really, he's got yours."

"What?" Howard's gaze went back to the half full tumbler. "I don't understand."  He stepped forward then, cautiously, and laid his hands on Steve's shoulders. "My God," he breathed. "You really are here. How? How is this possible? Your plane went down, we searched, _I_ searched, and all I found was that cube." His eyes narrowed. "And now there are two of them. If you're really Steve, will you please explain before I call up the nice people to fit me for a white jacket?"

"I'm from the future. There was a lab accident and I need your help to fix it."

"Wait, you're from the future? So, you're here twice?" Howard glanced at the Tesseracts, which were glowing in synchronization. "Like them?"

Steve sighed. "We have more time at this end, so I can tell you some things, but I have to be careful not to tell you too much. Tony told me it'd be quantum suicide if I changed history."

"Quantum." Howard looked dazed. "You're from the future where quantum is an everyday word."

"Well, not everyday, unless you're Tony Stark." Steve watched as the implications sank in.

"This Tony who has my eyes..."

"Your son. He's brilliant, amazing, and..." Steve took a deep breath. "I love him. I wanted you to know that. Not that I'm asking for your blessing, but I want you to know that we're happy together, and it's not... it's not against the law, so I'm not hurting Tony by loving him."

"All right. I'm just going to sit down now." Howard backed up until he hit a lab stool, and sat down heavily. A twisted smile appeared on his face. "My son. I'll have a son. And Captain America will be his lover." His eyes sharpened again and he looked at Steve. "How much is he like me? Did he seduce you?"

"He's brilliant and generous and prickly, but he's not you, Howard."

"So you're alive here and now? Can I...do you have the coordinates?"

Steve shook his head. "No, I don't, and even if I did, there's reasons I can't be found ahead of time. Too many lives depend on it." Steve smiled. "You keep searching. I'll be found when I'm needed." Steve didn't have the heart to tell Howard that would be after Howard's death. "In the meantime, could I borrow a pair of trousers?"

"Yes, yes, of course, I don't know what I was thinking." Howard picked up the tumbler and tossed the contents back in one quick swallow. "I'll be right back. Don't go away. Oh. Should I call Peggy, can she know? She's in New York, now."

"Yeah, I have to talk to Peggy, too. And I really need pants for that!"

 

Howard reappeared a few minutes later to toss a bundle of clothes at Steve's head. "Had to borrow these from Jarvis, nothing of mine would come close to fitting."

Steve caught the clothes, forgetting that his hands were covering up his vitals. Howard grinned. "Yeah, no. You'd never get in my pants."

Steve resisted the impulse to roll his eyes and moved behind a desk to block Howard's line of sight. He started getting dressed. "You borrowed them from Jarvis?" Instinctively Steve looked up, as he always did when Tony's computer talked to him.

"My butler."

"Oh." So Tony had named his computerized friend and helper after the family butler. Somehow Steve wasn't surprised by the sentiment. "So, did you call Peggy?"

"Yeah. I didn't tell her about you, just that I needed to speak to her, here. I had to grovel a bit." Howard quirked a rueful grin. "She's mad at me because I ... well... I did something I shouldn't have. A lot of things I shouldn't have."

That was a little awkward. Steve didn't really want to know any embarrassing secrets he'd have to keep from Tony. "Ok, so I got sent here in kinda a rush. There's things you need to know about the future, so you can tell Tony. I don't think Peggy should know them, so we need to talk before she gets here."

Howard nodded and pulled a stool over to sit on. He'd gone serious. "Right. Should I take notes?"

"I can't give you any scientific details, so I don't know what good they'd do you, but sure. Tony does find your notebook, but there's nothing straightforward in it, so I guess you destroy them?"

"Yeah, ok." Howard picked up a pad of paper and a pencil. "So. Shoot."

"It started with the arc reactor. I don't know how it works, but you build it."

Howard's eyes went bright. "God, I just had the idea for it." He glanced at the Tesseracts. "From studying that, in part."

"Well, you build it, apparently over everyone's objections, and years later Tony miniaturizes it."

"Miniaturizes? My best guess is that the thing will be a city block long."

"You get it down to a single building. Tony..." Steve held his hands apart. "His version is this size."

"My God." Howard's eyes were shining. "My kid's really a chip off the old block, huh?"

Steve smiled. "Yeah, Tony's... he's something all right. Anyway, the reactor ran off palladium, but that was causing... really bad problems."

"How bad?"

"It was bad. He needed to find a replacement element. You figured it out, but the tools to actually make it don't exist now, don't exist for a long time. You hid clues to it. I'm not sure if I should tell you exactly how you hide them." Steve laughed. "You hid clues in plain sight in the kind of junk that clutters your attic, but you don't have the heart to throw out. A clue to find a clue, and in your notebooks there were other clues and even in a comic book that's not been printed yet, you gave me a clue that led to Peggy who gave us another clue. I'm not even sure we found them all, but we found enough."

"Ok, sure, but what do I say in these clues?"

"Um, you tell me to believe Peggy in 2010." Steve let the year sink in. "I'll tell her what she needs to know once she gets here."

"So. Peggy gets to see a new millennium." Howard looked at Steve. "I take it I don't make it that far."

"Howard."

"No, no," Howard waved his hands. "Don't tell me, I shouldn't have said that. It doesn't matter. Go on, what do I tell Tony?"

Steve racked his brains for all the details he could recall, including SHIELD and Fury, and Heinlein's story. Howard had just read it and still had the copy of Astounding Science Fiction lying on a workbench. Howard led him skillfully to fill in the blanks, but they had to stop after half an hour when Peggy arrived. 

 

"All right, Howard, what's so earthshakingly import..." Peggy stopped talking halfway down the stairs. She put her hand up to her mouth. "Steve? It's really you? You're not one of Howard's toys?"

"It's really me," Steve said. He didn't have a chance to say anything else, because Peggy was down the stairs and into his arms in the next moment. "Peggy," Steve said. He just held her tight, closing his eyes and breathing in the scent of her perfume, the sharp tang of her lipstick, the warmth and solidity of her in his arms. "Oh, Peggy."

Howard cleared his throat. "Steve can't stay, Peggy. I'm sorry."

Peggy whirled to glare at Howard. "What do you mean, he can't stay?"

"I don't belong here," Steve told her. "Not here, not now. I promise we'll see each other again, but it won't be for a long, long time. Peggy, it'll be all right. You'll meet someone special, and you'll love them. You won't waste your life thinking about me."

Peggy stared at Steve. "You say that as if you know it will happen."

"Yeah." Steve gave her a small smile. "I do know it." He kissed Peggy on her cheek. "I will always love you. I'm sorry I never took you dancing."

"Why did you call me here, just to say goodbye?"

"Not just that," Steve said, "although I would have done it just to see you again. I need you to tell me something the next time we meet. It's important, you have to remember it, no matter what, no matter how long you have to wait."

"Right. What is it?" Steve could see Peggy visibly bracing herself, as strong as ever when there was a mission.

"Tell me that Howard built Tony a crooked house in 1941."

"Oh, codes, how I do love them." Peggy smiled at Steve. "This is all Howard's fault, isn't it?"

Howard made a protesting noise.

Steve shook his head. "Howard's helping me. He always means well, you know that."

"He always does," Peggy said. "But I'm still keeping an eye on him."

Howard looked annoyed, but held his peace.

"I'm counting on it," Steve said. He hugged her. "Remember."

"I've got it. Howard built Tony a crooked house in 1941."

"Not just that. Remember to be happy without me. Let me go."

Peggy blinked rapidly. "I will." She lunged forward and kissed Steve on the mouth, breaking away and turning to run up the stairs without another word.

After a moment, Howard said, "I'd promise to look after her, but Peggy would have my guts for garters if I tried."

"You're right there." Steve smiled. It hurt a little, but he smiled. "But you will anyway, won't you?"

"Eh. Maybe." Howard got up and clapped his hands together. "Back to work. I've been thinking about everything you said. Hypothetically, this is what I have-- the 'battery' is a subset of a reflection of the Tesseract, and so you should be able to use one of the full reflections to arrive at its location."

"So I could have gone there directly?" Steve asked.

"Well, no, because paradox. If you didn't come here to tell me, to tell you..." Howard raised his eyebrows at Steve's grimace. "Yeah. It's a chain, and if one link breaks, it falls apart. You have to get Tony's body and the battery, and bring them back to me, so Tony can later find the battery in my 'attic'."

"But if he doesn't have it, then his experiment would have worked, and Tony wouldn't have been..."

Howard shook his head. "No, see, at the moment, all I've got to go on are thought experiments, and none of them say that's a good idea. It might _seem_ to work, but actually just split off a new universe, one where Tony doesn't get separated from his body, and one where he does, and you know, I have a hunch that would be a bad thing for reality. Or, alternatively, the time photons that make up light might have a 'preference' for self-consistency in timelines and refuse to let you do it in the first place. You could wind up locked into a loop where you try and get sent back to try again, forever. Yeah, let's stick with what we know already worked once." Howard paused. "Tony held up all right, didn't he?"

"Isolation wasn't new for him." Steve sighed. "He said you sent him to boarding school when he was seven years old. I can see now why you did it, but he still thinks you didn't like him."

"Jesus." Howard closed his eyes tightly. "My son. How could he not know I loved him?"

"He said you told him Starks were made of iron."

Howard shook his head. "Iron is brittle. You have to subject it to intense heat to make steel if you want it to be strong." He opened his eyes and wiped at his face with his sleeve. "Yeah, well, I never thought I'd get the father of the year award."

Steve put his hand on Howard's shoulder. "Tony still loves you. He keeps a photo of the two of you wherever he goes."

"It doesn't matter what he thinks of me. If he's got to be tough to survive, I'll make him tough."

"Right," Steve said, after they'd sat for five minutes and couldn't think of anything else that needed to be said. "Ok, I don't need you for the rest of this, Howard. You'll know I've succeeded when you see the battery on your desk."

"If you think I'm gonna leave, you're out of your mind, Steve."

"You don't need to know any more."

"Yep, that's probably true." Howard made no move to go. "We should really be getting on with this before Jarvis decides to come down and make me drink tea. He's got all the keys, you know, can't lock him out. Very nosy person. And a gossip. He'd be blabbing to the world. Probably go to the newspapers."

Steve threw up his hands in defeat. "Sure. I know that's just the kind of person you'd trust with all your secrets."

Howard beamed. "You know me so well." He made a shooing motion with his hands. "Go on. And Steve. If you don't come back, I'm coming in after you."

"You can't! I'm expendable because I'm from the future, but you can't risk destroying everything for me."

"Who says it's for you?" Howard lifted his chin. "I will probably be a lousy father, but I'm not gonna let my kid down. Tony is my future. He's my legacy to the world, not all..." Howard waved around his workshop. "This. This is a lot of bad ideas, terrible things unleashed on the world for the best of motives. Tony's different. He's going to be better than me and... he's going to have you. You'll teach him the important things, the things I don't have it in me to share with him. Do you think there's anything I wouldn't risk for him to have that chance?"

Steve really couldn't argue against Howard's determination. "All right, but how will you know if there's a problem?"

Howard turned and pointed to the shop clock behind him. "Visualize me, as I am, sitting here, and the clock ten minutes ahead. Come back there and then. I'll wait a few minutes after that to be sure you're not coming. You'll have as much time as you need wherever you wind up, remember. Spend an hour or a day, you can still return ten minutes from now."

"Ok. Yeah." Steve picked up the nearest Tesseract and thought of the battery, the battery and Tony, wherever, whenever, they were. They needed to be reunited, they needed to be found.

 

It was different this time. Steve opened his eyes. Everything was gray, but no, gray was too definite a word. Everything was vague. He held tightly onto the Tesseract, the only real thing in this no place. There was nothing under his feet, there was no temperature, not hot, not cold, there was no air, no sound, no other light than the blue glow of the Tesseract. _"Take me to Tony, take me to Tony and the battery,"_ he thought fiercely, forcing the Tesseract to obey. [](http://www.ipernity.com/doc/eclectic-house/41804222) He sensed a dim malevolence in it, like a dirty fingerprint left by the Red Skull, a desire to be cruel just because it had the power. _"NO,"_ Steve thought. _"That's wrong, that's bad. That's being a bully. The strong should take care of the weak. Remember how the Red Skull felt? He wasn't happy, he wouldn't ever be happy, nothing was enough for him. You could have given him the world and he'd still have been angry and unhappy. Me, I don't need much, I just need to be able to do the right thing, to be a good person. I love Tony. Feel that. Isn't that better than hate?"_

The Tesseract seemed to be thinking it over. Then it pulled at his hand. Steve gripped it tighter. His arm moved, until it was stretched out in front of him. He couldn't feel motion, but he hoped he was moving, hoped he was going to find Tony. No, he didn't hope. He believed. He knew. He had to find Tony, it was the only possible thing that could happen.

Another light appeared, faint in the not-distance. Steve kept his eyes on it, watching it grow. It became two lights as it expanded. One was the battery floating in front of a human formed shape bearing a larger blue light in its chest. Steve told the Tesseract, _Yes. That's it. It feels good, being good, helping people. You want to be a good person when you grow up._ The Tesseract gave Steve a distinctly pleased feeling, it reminded him of a puppy wriggling with happiness. _You're a good little Tesseract, yes, you are. You shouldn't ever listen to bad people who make you want to do bad things._ He kept thinking good, positive thoughts until his outstretched hand reached Tony. Tony was naked, and scarred and a lot smaller than Iron Man, a lot more human and vulnerable. Steve looked at Tony's chest, at the horrible creeping black lines, at the embedded metal and the poisonous blue glow above his heart and Steve felt sick. He picked up the floating battery, and then he put both arms around Tony and held on tightly. _Take us back to Howard_ he told the Tesseract. _Take us to the right time. We need to make things right._

 

"Oh, my God," Howard said when they arrived back in his workshop, the Tesseract giving Steve a smug feeling of accomplishment, which he hurried to praise it for. "What... no... he's got an arc reactor in his _body_. I didn't realize..." He looked like he was going to be sick. "My invention, it's killing him."

"It saved him, Howard," Steve said. "He would have died without it, and when I go back, we're going to make your element and cure him. He's strong, your son is a survivor."

Howard nodded, stiffly. "He must be. He will be." Howard suddenly looked fierce. "I'll make sure he's strong, Steve. You... you make sure he's happy."

"I will, Howard. I promise." Steve reached out to hand Howard the battery. "I'll take care of him for you. He's a good man. You'd like him."

"Thank you, Steve. Thank you." 

Steve tightened his grip on Tony's body again. "Take us back to the Tower," he told the Tesseract. "Take us back to Tony. Take us home."


	7. Tony POV 4

Bruce was still distracting Selvig with his witty repartee at lunch in New Mexico, while the Spy Twins had vanished when Tony's back was turned. He didn't know what they were doing and he didn't really care. He didn't want anyone to hold his hand while he waited. He was strong. He was a Stark, made of iron. He was... scared right down to his non-existent toes.

"How long now, Jarvis?" Tony asked while pacing back and forth.

"It has been two minutes and thirty seven seconds since your last time check. Eight minutes and forty seven seconds since Captain Rogers departed on his mission."

"Yeah, yeah, but shouldn't he have been able to return the moment he left?"

"Sir, if I may be so bold as to point out; Captain Rogers will be returning when the mental image he holds matches reality. You have moved."

"Crap. Yeah, ok." Tony returned to stand in front of the work bench. "Was my helmet on or off?"

"Off, sir. Please allow me to control the placement of the Iron Man."

"Right, good." It felt strange, giving complete control over to Jarvis and being edged slightly to one side, and then jiggled back and forth. Tony took off the helmet and waited for a few seconds.

Then he said, "HEY! If it has to be that exact, he'll never find Dad!"

Fortunately, before Tony could work up a good panic there was a burst of blue light, and Steve reappeared, arms wrapped tightly around Tony's body. Both of them were naked, but for once Tony couldn't think of a single remotely off-color remark.

"Oh, God, Steve, you did it."

"Yeah." Steve grinned at Tony and then his brows went together in that cute little wrinkle Tony adored. "So... what do we do now?"

"I'm alive, right. I can see I'm breathing. Oh, this is so weird, isn't it?" Tony remembered he could move. Internally he told Jarvis he knew he'd been played, and Jarvis replied that he had become tired of the 'are we there yet' game. Tony clunked Iron Man forward to take his body from Steve.  "Um. Shouldn't something be happening? Jarvis, help?"

"Perhaps," Jarvis said, "the process needs to be reversed?"

"Yeah, no, I don't even have the battery any more. What happened, you left it with Dad?"

"Of course, he needed one..." Steve paused. "He had the past one, and now he has the future one, too. Howard told me I had to bring you and the battery back to him. He lied," Steve said, sounding shocked. "He lied so he could have the chance to see you. Won't that have changed things?"

Tony shook his head. "I don't... huh, this is weird... I now have a memory of finding two of them in Dad's chest. And at the same time I know there was only one. You know, I'm not going to go look in it. Let's let it be Schrodinger's cat, state undetermined."

Steve blinked. "I don't know what a cat has to do with it."

"Look it up later. What are we going to do with ME." Tony walked his body over to a convenient convertible he kept in his workshop because, well, he liked it, and gently lowered himself into the front seat sitting up with the hands on the steering wheel. "Even if the battery was here, I'm pretty sure trying to replicate the experiment would only make things worse."

Steve was still holding the Tesseract. "Oh, you know what you were saying about the Tesseract being alive? It is, and if you ask it politely, it's very helpful." And then Steve actually petted the cube, which brightened and dimmed its glow in a rhythm very like a cat's purr.

"Deus Ex Machina? You know, right now, I'm willing to suspend the hell out my disbelief. Cubik seems to like you, would you please ask him to put me back in my Tony-shaped box? Only, you know, be gentle with it. It was kinda dying when I left it, you know, needed Dad's new element, and yeah, gonna have to fix up the shop, make a new collider and I'm not sure I'm strong enough to hold the wrench steady..."

"Sir," Jarvis said, "you are babbling."

Tony shut up and looked at Steve, holo- eyes wide and pleading.

"Cubik, huh? That's a good name," Steve said, "Hey, little Cubik, this is Tony. He needs your help. Could you please fix him up? He's a really good guy and I love him." Steve patted the Tesseract. "You can do it, I believe in you."

The Tesseract's glow rippled in expanding and contracting ruffled edged waves of varying intensities of blue-white light. Abruptly it contracted until the cube was entirely dark. For a moment Tony was afraid they'd somehow broken it, but then two blindingly bright beams of light shot out, one to Tony's body, and one to Iron Man. Tony felt himself pulled. He clung to Jarvis.

_Sir, you must let go,_ Jarvis said internally.

_Gonna miss this, buddy,_ Tony replied. He forced himself to stop resisting. It was hard. He was so used to taking care of himself, not letting anyone in, not truly trusting anyone with any weakness, not even Rhodey or Pepper. But he had to. He had to trust Steve. If he couldn't trust Steve, he didn't want to live with the betrayal. 

"EEEYYOOW," Tony yelled, sitting up straight, and nearly smashing his face on the steering wheel in the process. "Tastes like coconut!" He worked his mouth, tasting coconut flavored saliva; he had a mouth! Steve was shouting something, but Tony wasn't listening. He turned his hands over and spread his fingers. "Oh, God, I'm back. Hands! I missed you!" He looked down at his crotch. "YES! We're back in business, boys!"

"TONY!" 

Tony looked up, just in time to see Steve grabbing him and pulling him out of the convertible. The Tesseract was _hovering_ next to him, supported by streams of what  looked like repulsor rays. Tony hugged back hard. "I love you, too, but careful with the goods."

"Tony! Look at you. Look!" Steve thumped Tony on the chest.

Tony looked down. His skin was smooth and pink around the reactor. "What?" Tony touched it. The raised, blackened veins were back to normal. He took a deep breath, and it didn't stop, it went on, and on, far past the point his remaining lung tissue could do. His chest expanded, and the arc reactor fell off, a quarter inch thin plate that chimed and rolled along the floor, still glowing. It left behind a perfectly normal looking torso. "Jesus!" He panicked for an instant, expecting the shrapnel to slice into his scarred heart, but... "I feel fine. I feel better than fine. JARVIS! Scan, scan me now!" Tony pushed away from Steve and stood spread out like daVinci's Vitruvian Man. To hell with modesty, not that Tony ever had much of that to begin.

"SIR!" Jarvis exclaimed, "I am scanning a perfect match with your records of three years ago! There are no traces of palladium, nor of any of the surgical procedures Doctor Yinsen performed."

DUM-E and U wheeped excitedly.  Steve grabbed Tony and picked him up right off his feet, hugging him hard. Cubik turned somersaults in the air. "Oh, God, oh God, Steve, I love you so much. Close your eyes." Tony wrapped his arms and legs around Steve and kissed him hard.

DUM-E squealed and used his favorite fire extinguisher, covering them in foam. Tony started laughing so hard he could barely breathe. "Oh, God, I wish Pepper and Rhodey could see me now."

The whole room glowed blue.

"TONY!"  Tony turned his head at the mingled masculine-feminine shout of outrage. War Machine stood behind him, in his armor, but with the face plate lifted. Pepper was next to him, dressed to kill in a blue satin dress.

Steve blushed cherry red. Tony grinned and waved at his friends. "Hi! Sorry about the inconvenience. I was dying, but I'm all better. Steve and I are going to go now." Tony wriggled his fingers at Cubik. "Cubik, baby, be good. I'm gonna talk to Fury, see if Steve can keep you. He's a good influence on both of us."

"TONY!" Pepper snapped, "What is going on?"

"Uh huh, no time to chat. Jarvis, fill them in. Home, Jeeves," Tony told Steve.

"CAPTAIN ROGERS!" Rhodey shouted. "What are you doing?"

Steve glanced at the rank insignia on War Machine. "Sir, with all due respect, if you can't guess, the Air Force needs to take lessons from the Army." He shifted Tony's weight more comfortably and walked out of the workshop. Pepper and Rhodey watched them go, silently.

"Damn," Tony said. "That was hot. So... are the rumors true? Are you a virgin?"

Steve smiled. "No."

"Will you be gentle with me?" 

Steve's smile widened. "No."

Tony gave a happy sigh. "Jarvis, hold all my calls until future notice. I'm going to be very, very busy."


	8. Epilog -Rhodey and Pepper

"Jesus," Rhodey said. "Tony and Captain America."

"I need a drink," Pepper said decisively. She strode over to a corner of the lab and opened a dusty cabinet. "The choices are... Scotch. Scotch. And more Scotch." She got out two glasses. "And what will you have, James?"

"I think I'll go with Scotch," Rhodey replied. War Machine walked over to her. He accepted a glass from her and then clinked it against hers. "Tony and Captain America. God bless them." He took a long swallow.

"They do look good together," Pepper admitted. She drank half her Scotch in one go, without blinking.

"Jesus," Rhodey said again. He emptied his glass and held it out for a refill. Pepper obliged, finished her own drink and poured herself a second.

"They would make beautiful babies," Pepper said solemnly.

Rhodey nearly choked on his drink.

Behind them, Cubik's glow brightened and pulsed.


End file.
